Posts tagged: An Assured Understanding

Neville Goddard 12-08-1969

Christmas is the proclamation of a divine event to which all creation aspires. It is an event which puts an entirely different light upon human life, for it proclaims that man has been saved. I question seriously whether an nth part of one per cent of those who call themselves Christians know what this event is about. Tonight I will tell you from my personal experience.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians that “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Now, the Holy Spirit is nothing more than the individual’s personal experience of the event, for in the Book of John, the Risen Christ proclaims that he will “send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will lead you into all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” In the beginning you were told that which seemed incredible, and the Holy Spirit is your experience of that event, for only then can you know that Jesus is Lord.

Now, who is Jesus? He is your awareness, your I AMness. In the Book of Exodus, Moses was told to “Say unto the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent you.’ This is my name forever. By this name I shall be remembered throughout all generations, and besides me there is no other Lord.” Jesus is the Lord, your I AMness; your consciousness of being. “Joshua” is the Hebraic form of our word “Jesus” and means “Jehovah is savior.” There is no other Lord than I am. “Our God is a God of salvation. To God, the Lord, belongs escape from death.” God is buried in humanity to make man a living being. And he will rise in the individual as his own wonderful human imagination.

The discovery of the God within is the one far-off divine event to which creation moves. The only resurrection spoken of in scripture is when he rises in you, and the only birth spoken of there is when he comes out – and that is Christmas. The event seems to be single and separate from the other events, but they are all part of a complex whole. We are now approaching one part we call Christmas: the birth of God, the birth of I am!

Where could you go that you are not aware of being? Therefore, where can you go and not find God? If you lived in hell would you not be aware of being there? So God is in hell. If you lived in ecstasy you would be aware of your ecstatic mood, and that awareness is God, for I am is the only name of Jesus.

In his Book called Acts, Luke said: “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” To call Jesus? No! To be aware! Without using words, when you are aware you are saying I am. That is Jesus, who is buried and rises in you. And when he escapes from the tomb of your skull, Christ is born. We are taught that this happened 2,000 years ago among people who are long gone from the world, but I know from experience that when it happens in you it is strangely contemporary. Yes, Christ was born. That is a fact, but it is not over, as it is still taking place in the individual the world over. Christmas is that one far-off great divine event to which the whole vast world is moving.

If you ask someone who calls himself a Christian, who Christ is, the chances are he would tell you that Jesus is the son of God. And if you told him that he must be God to know that, he would be horrified and tell you that you are blasphemous to suggest such a thing. But if you return to the proclamation of the great event, you will find that “No one knows who the son is except the Father.” So if you know God’s son is Jesus Christ, then you have to be God the Father. And, since no one knows who the Father is except the son, Jesus Christ must have revealed you as his Father. Well, man cannot rationalize this because he has not had the experience; for no one can know that Jesus is Lord (which is God the Father) except by the Holy Spirit, for it is he who brings you the experience of the great mystery.

We are told that when Paul rose up into the third heaven he heard unutterable words. Some translations say they were “words which man may not utter,” but it isn’t that. What Paul saw and heard was incapable of expression in words. There are no words to express a body that one wears when he rises within himself, for it is not a body of flesh and blood, but an indescribable form divine. In his 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul said: “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, for God gives it a body as he has chosen.” I will know you in eternity, but for all the identity of purpose there will be a radical discontinuity of form.

Yesterday morning when I returned to this level of my being, I arrested the body I was wearing to spend some ten to fifteen minutes right on the surface of my being. The form is alive. It is all energy, all power, all wisdom, and all love. I wear that body as I do the suit I am wearing now, only I know it to be my very self. I am always in control, by intensifying my energy or modifying it. In that body I looked out over glorious scenes never seen on earth. They were all three-dimensional visions in vivid colors and indescribable forms. I would observe one, then let it go to observe another – all heavenly treasures which are in me.

When your eyes begin to open inwardly into the world of thought, into eternity, you will see what no mortal eye turned out could ever see. There are no images in this outer world to describe the eternal world which is imperishable, the world you will see when you are wearing Christ, the New Man.

This is an indescribable, ineffable, mystery; for God comes to us as one unknown, yet one who will allow the individual to experience who he is. When you experience Christ, you are experiencing who you are, for you are the Jesus of scripture. You are the Lord God Jehovah. The event toward which you are moving is the awakening of the Lord in you. Then and only then will you know who you are.

Christmas is simply the proclamation of this one far-off divine event to which creation moves. It is not about one who lived a long time ago, but about you. The Bible is very personal. It is your own spiritual biography, your salvation history. To see the characters of scripture as characters of history is to see truth tempered to the weakness of the human soul. They are not characters on the outside, but within you, for the drama unfolds in your imagination. You are buried in yourself and do not know it. But when you reach the fullness of time you will awake to Christmas.

Last lecture night I told you of an experience of a friend who tasted of the power of the age to come. She had found herself, in dream, in the home of people who have not changed the fashion of their outer garments for 300 years. The woman’s second husband had been killed by the group and she tried to persuade them that what they had done was wrong, but they would not believe her. A group of men all dressed in black and carrying machine guns arrived, ready to kill everyone, and when she tried to persuade them that it was wrong they could not understand. Then she began to awake in her dream to realize that, although they all seemed to be independent of her perception of them, they were only aspects of her dream. Arresting her power of perception, everything froze. She changed their intentions, released the activity in her which allowed them to become reanimated again, and watched as the man put down his gun and with outstretched arms went over to embrace the woman.

This is the power of which I speak. It is a power unknown to the mortal, rational mind. We think power is in the atom bomb, in hydrogen energy, money in the bank, or securities. Tonight, undoubtedly a dozen or more very wealthy men will die and not take one penny with them. They simply left the garment of flesh and blood they made so real, along with their securities. But you can never lose the power of which I speak, for it is forever. These bodies die, and all that they possess will die with them; but the power of imagination is imperishable, for it is the power of God in man, called Christ. Man is slowly awakening to this power and when he hears and senses it, this is the power he will exercise.

Now, in my friend’s case, she awoke in her dream to discover that, although everything seemed to be taking place independent of her perception of it, the dream was only herself pushed out. Knowing that she could control the dream, she changed the motivation of the man from murder to love. Then she released the activity which allowed them to become reanimated again, and they obeyed her command. This is your future, your inheritance where everything is under your control.

These bodies of flesh and blood are only garments God wears. Even though they are consumed in a furnace (called cremation), the bodies are restored for others to occupy. The world is restored, but you – the actor in the drama – move up until you finally awake, and that is what we call Christmas.

Christmas is the awakening of God in man. It’s not an event which took place 2,000 years ago, but is taking place all over the world in those who have reached the fullness of time. When the fullness of time has come for you, you begin to stir, to awaken from this dream of death and come out of your skull, which is your birth from above. These two events take place the same night. We separate them by three and a half months, and then add a few months to the discovery of the fatherhood of God, then more time to the ascension of the spirit; but there are four parts of the one grand event. The first is resurrection. The second is birth. The third is the discovery of the fatherhood through the son, and the fourth is the ascension: the rising of the son of man (who you are) into heaven in a serpentine form.

Tonight many are preparing for the great event and singing their heads off on Christmas morning. I’m all for it. Let them have fun. But they will be singing of one they do not know. They will sing their hallelujahs thinking that someone in time and space is responding to their adulation – but that’s not Christmas. In the world, moving among them walk those who have experienced the event. They know that Jesus is Lord and that he is their wonderful human imagination, their I AMness.

I am is Jehovah’s name forever. By this name I shall be remembered throughout all generations. You are now a living being because Jehovah is buried within you. And you are destined to become a life-giving spirit, as my friend discovered she was. Stopping the activity in herself which allowed others to be alive, she changed their motivation by giving a command which was in conflict with their intentions. Then she released the activity in her and they became reanimated once more – not to carry out their former intention, but to execute her command. She has now tasted of the power of the age to come.

On this level we argue, trying to persuade the other that he is wrong when he knows he is right, so we end up just where we stand. This is life in a world of death where everything waxes, wanes, and vanishes.

But you are destined to enter the world of which I speak. It is eternal and cannot be entered with a body of flesh and blood, but requires a new body. So unless what you sow dies, it cannot be made alive. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but God (who is yourself) gives you a body as he has chosen. It is a glorious body of power and wisdom and called the body of Christ. It is worn as you would a garment, only you are in control of your power through your innate wisdom – a wisdom to which no doubt is attached. This proclamation is not discovered by some rational argument. The gospel is not discovered, it is disclosed. It is not something you can logically prove, but a self-revelation of God. Scholars can study the life and teachings of Jesus until the end of time but never find in the study who the Father or the Son is. If they did, they would not tamper with the Bible.

In the earliest of all the books, the Book of Mark, the statement is made: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” The phrase, “the son of God,” is an addition by a scribe. The earliest and best manuscripts that we have, omit the phrase, “the son of God,” and read: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

You are told at the end of the Old Testament that “A son honors his father. If then I am a father, where is my honor?” In other words, where is my son? The New Testament begins by revealing the son, but man cannot understand. He does not know that Jesus is the Lord who is God the Father, until he has the experience of waking and rising in his skull. Of coming out of that skull and holding the Christ child, the sign of his resurrection, in his own hands. He must stand before the son of God and David must call him Father. And may I tell you: at that moment there will be no doubt in his mind as to who the son is and who he is relative to that boy. He will know he is David’s father and David will know he is his son.

In the Book of Samuel we read: “When you lie down with your fathers I will raise up after you your son, who will come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son.” Now we jump to the Book of Revelation, where the Lord is speaking, saying: “I am the root and the offspring of David.” I am the root, the cause which is the father. And I am the offspring of my son, David; therefore I am one with my grandson. All of the members of the human race are fused together into a single being called David. And what comes out of that? David’s offspring. If David’s root is the Lord, what comes out of David must be one with his root, so I am the root and the offspring. I am the grandfather and the grandson and David is my son. Man matures when he becomes his grandfather, for the grandfather is the Lord.

We are dealing with a mystery. If you think when you read the story of the Old or New Testament that you are going to reach truth by some rational argument, you are searching in vain. The wisest of the wise cannot see it, and because it isn’t rational they call it a myth. But I tell you: he gives himself to whomever he will, even the lowliest among men. Those who have all their degrees, honors, money, and reputation are dead but do not know it. I do not condemn them or argue with them, but simply walk by, looking for willing ears to tell my story to, and usually it is to those who are not the scholars of the day. Those who hear my words may not understand them, but locking my message in their hearts, they ponder it; and one day, believing as I hoped they would, it will erupt within them. Then they, too, will know that the Lord Jesus is he who the world calls the God of the universe. They will know it because the Holy Spirit brought to their remembrance all that I have told them.

Let the world go blindly on, as it will. Eternity awaits. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Everyone eventually will come into this knowledge. But no one will come until he hungers, until he thirsts after God with a thirst that only an experience of God can satisfy.

The world, not understanding scripture, thinks that God will send a physical famine. Oh, that is possible, it happens all over the world anyway. It’s not because we cannot supply the food – the problem is economic. We are told to curtail production, as we cannot find bins large enough to house our supply. We put an enormous weight on the taxpayer because we allow food to rot, as we do not know how to give it away. People are paid not to grow food, while our government talks about not being able to supply. Our southern states alone could grow enough to feed and clothe the world, but how to do it under the present economy? I am not an economist so I cannot tell you how; but I do know it is not a lack of production, but rather a lack of economy.

The economic problem I cannot solve, but I can tell you that Christ in you is your own wonderful human imagination, that the God of scripture and the Lord Jesus Christ is your I am. Let the world scoff at it. That is perfectly all right; they are only fulfilling scripture. “Scoffers will come scoffing saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the foundation of the world.”’ So let them scoff, but you accept my message and put your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you. Hope it will erupt within you now, in the not distant future; and then – when you shed this garment of flesh (as you must), you will be clothed in power; clothed in wisdom; clothed in love.

Those who have not had the experience before they depart this world are restored to life to find themselves in a world just like this. They will be faced with all the problems they have neglected here. They may leave the garment of a billionaire to find themselves a shoeshine boy or one who cleans latrines, if that is what must be done to rouse them to believe the incredible story.

Don’t think that your present position in life is any indicator of what you will be when you leave here. If Christ has not awakened in you, you will find yourself in a terrestrial world like this, in a body like these, new and young, but not a baby. You will be doing something best suited for the work yet to be done in you. Until that power in you awakes, you will continue using your rational mind in a rational world just like this.

The Christmas that we now look forward to celebrate is one aspect of the great event. There are four definite acts in the single event, which begin with your resurrection. This is followed by your birth from above. Then David reveals your fatherhood, and the fourth and final act appears when you ascend into heaven in a serpentine form and enter it violently, clothed in power.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 10/23/1967

In the second chapter of the Book of Luke the story is told of Jesus’ parents, worried and seeking him for three days, finding him and complaining, to which Jesus said: “How is it that you sought me? Know you not that I must be about my Father’s business?” I ask you not to put yourself in that frame of mind. Your earthly parents seek you and, at the tender age of twelve, you dare to say to them: “I must be about my Father’s business.”

This statement has reference to the 40th Psalm and the 4th chapter of John. In the 40th Psalm you are told: “In the role of the book it is written about me.” Every man is destined to discover that scripture is his autobiography. It’s not written about individual beings like Jesus Christ, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on who lived unnumbered years ago, but about the individual you! The 4th chapter of the Book of John begins with a discussion between the Lord Jesus Christ and a woman of Samaria about a well and water. After this discussion the disciples say to Jesus: “Master you have had nothing to eat” and he replies: “I have food you know not of. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

This is true. You have come into this world only to finish the work of him who sent you. And who is he? The Father. “He who sees me, sees he who sent me. I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I leave the world and return to the Father. He who sees me sees the Father, for I and the Father are one.”

Conceiving the thought in the beginning, God had to have an agent to express it. Everything in this world needs man to express it and may I tell you: God is man. In the beginning God made man in his image. “Male/female made he them and called their name Man.” Read it carefully in the 5th chapter of Genesis. Creating Man to express himself, God comes into the world to express and finish what he conceived in the beginning. Conceiving a state and knowing it takes a man to express it; God sent himself from the depth of his own being into this world to fulfill the state.

“In the beginning was the Word (the purpose) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Old Testament is God’s Word (his plan) which he made known through his servants, the prophets. The New Testament interprets the Old. The story of Jesus Christ is the interpretation of the prophecy recorded in the Old. Read it carefully, for everything said of Jesus Christ, you are going to experience. It is said: “His name shall be called the Word of God.” Called God’s Word, his seed, his creative power, your imagination is God’s creative power and wisdom. Can you conceive of any greater wisdom than your own wonderful human imagination? Think of something. The moment you do, it’s right before your mind’s eye. Maybe you can’t draw a straight line, yet you can imagine your mother even though she is gone from this world. Think of anyone and they instantly appear before your mind’s eye. That is your own wonderful creative power-filled imagination who is Jesus Christ in you. It is he who has come into the world to fulfill the Word of God, and everything must be fulfilled by the Jesus Christ in you, who is your hope of glory.

We are told in the 22nd chapter of the Book of Luke: “Scripture must be fulfilled in me,” so you must be about your Father’s business by experiencing everything said of Jesus Christ in scripture. The miraculous birth will be yours, the discovery of the Fatherhood, the ascent into heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon you in the bodily form of a dove. Then like the psalmist you will say: “Thou hast delivered me from the world of death,” for you will know from experience that in the volume of the book it was all about you!

I have been sent from the depth of my soul to act as a magnet to those who are about to fulfill scripture, and they come, each in his own order. Last Friday morning my friend Bennie found himself cataleptic. Unable to open his eyes or move his body, Ben could hear within himself the cry of a child as he felt an unearthly wind in his skull. Then a star exploded from his skull and a child wrapped in swaddling clothes fell into his arms. Looking at the child he said: “Oh, my darling” and knew that no one in eternity could care for that child but himself. As the vision faded he was given a photograph of the child.

Only a couple of days before this happened to Bennie, he said:, “In the spirit you were teaching the word of God when someone said: ‘Tell us the story of Jesus’ and you replied: ‘The story of Jesus is a persistent assumption that you are what you want to be, that things are as you desire them to be.’“ This is true, for unless you believe that you are the being you now worship on the outside, you remain desiring and die in your sins of unfulfilled desires. You’ve got to begin to believe that you are Jesus Christ, the Word of God, which – having gone out will not return empty, but will fulfill your purpose and accomplish that which you sent yourself to do. What is that? To fulfill scripture. That’s all you are here for.

On this level you can be rich if that is your desire, but remember the story of Jesus is persistent assumption. You can persist in the assumption that you are wealthy. I have many friends across this country who are very, very wealthy, yet I would say ninety-nine percent of them are miserable; but they will all tell you the same thing. I think of one in particular now. She has a fortune in diamonds. Tiffany, who sells diamonds marked up 300-400%, offered her $100,000 for one piece. When she joins us for dinner in New York City she wears a broach, a ring, and a pendant, worth a half million dollars. Ruth was born a very poor girl and – desiring wealth – she persistently assumed she was married to tremendous wealth. She had no money. Her only claim to any social status was that she was a descendant of the Adams who were in the White House. He, on the other hand, came out of a line of rascals. His great-grandfather was a bishop in New York; therefore, had good advice as to his descent and how to guard it. Ruth married and lived in hell for twenty-odd years, bearing him three sons. Now well into her seventies, her only desire is to marry more wealth and have more diamonds.

That is all right. The story of Jesus is a complete and undeviating persistence in the assumption that you are what you want to be. If you haven’t experienced wealth and that is what you want, persistently assume “I am wealthy.” If you have not experienced fame, assume you are famous, but “The day will come,” saith the Lord “when I will send a famine upon you. It will not be a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of my Word.” If that hunger hasn’t come to you, then take the same story of Jesus and fulfill your every desire.

When I am in New York, my friend comes to every meeting. She is a delightful person, but she is brutally honest with her desires. She wants more and more diamonds, more emeralds, more museum pieces. She confessed that she had no hunger to hear anything about David, but wants more and more money to leave her two sons. She wants more and more worldly illusions; but it is my hope that the hunger has come to you who are here – not for more and more bread and water, but for hearing the word of God with understanding.

The Book of Luke begins: “I have come to fulfill scripture. Then beginning with Moses in the law and the prophets and the psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” Questioning his earthly parents, he asks: “Why do you seek me? Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”….fulfilling scripture? Entering the temple, he is given a book which he opens and reads the first verse and half of the second of the 61st chapter of Isaiah, saying: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor and suffering. To open the prison doors to all who are in prison.”

Now, claiming to have come only to fulfill scripture, he tells you that the Spirit of the Lord God was upon him that day. It is not expressed that way in Luke, but he says – as you heard it “this day” – it was fulfilled. What does he mean? That he saw the Spirit descend in bodily form as a dove. It has been fulfilled in him and he is urging everyone to follow his pattern, for no one comes to the Father save by this pattern. The Spirit of the Lord God descended in bodily form as a dove. The same dove who returned to Noah in the ark. Man is the ark of God and the dove – coming to bring assurance that everything is all right – descends upon one, and as it remains he is told to “Rise and anoint him, for this is he.” Luke tells you how he is fulfilling scripture, for he knows that “In the volume of the book it is all about me.”

Like Paul, I have not restrained my lips. I have told of your deliverance. I have told of your everlasting love to anyone and everyone who will listen. They may not accept my words, but I do know that within a certain group the hunger is there and they will all begin to awake.

Now, in the 30th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, the Lord speaks, saying: “Can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands pulling himself out of himself like a woman in labor.” The Hebrew word “chalatz” (translated in both the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version as “loins”) means “to take off; to pull oneself out of oneself; to deliver.” When the Psalmist said: “He has delivered my soul from death” he was speaking of the physical body. It is a garment of death which appears in the world, waxes, wanes, vanishes, and turns into dust. The word translated “delivered” in the Psalms, is the same word which was translated “loins” in Jeremiah.

So, can a Man bear a child? Yes. Let us go back to what I quoted earlier. “Male/female made he them and called their name Man.” There is a womb in the male/female unlike that of an earthly woman. This womb is the skull of generic Man. It is there that God has planted His Word which cannot return unto him void, but must accomplish that which is His purpose and prosper in the thing for which he sent it. That purpose is to fulfill scripture, for God has an entirely different world awaiting those who fulfill His Word.

We are told: “This Word is truth.” Everyone enters the world to fulfill the truth and will not depart until God’s Word is accomplished. If God’s Word has not been fulfilled in you when the world calls you dead, you are restored to a life just as real as this, in a world just as real as this, to continue your journey until the hunger comes upon you and you will be drawn to that final point.

In his book called Urizen, William Blake tells of the serpent in the womb of Enitharmon who, shredding the scales of death, his hissing changes into the cry of a child and

“The dead heard the voice of the child

And began to awake from sleep

All things heard the voice of the child

And began to awake to life.”

You actually hear the cry of the child in your skull. It seems impossible, but may I tell you: it is true.

Now, to encourage those who are not interested in that aspect of the truth, let me go back to what Bennie heard me say in the spirit: “The story of Jesus is a persistent assumption.” This is true in every aspect of your life. You want to be rich? That’s the story of Jesus, which is a persistent assumption in the conviction that “I am rich,” for unless you believe that “I am rich” you die in your sins and continue to claim “I am poor.” You want to be known? Then persistently assume: “I am known.” Want to be healthy? “I am healthy!” Regardless of what you want to be, you must declare you already are it and persist in that assumption. An assumption is an act of faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Your reasoning mind may deny wealth. Your senses deny it too, but if you have faith you will dare to assume wealth, thereby becoming the man you want to be.

Maybe, tonight you would rather continue to worship a Jesus Christ on the outside. Maybe you would rather continue to walk with the sheep of the world and not be the shepherd, but you would like to feed on green pastures by still waters, instead of climbing the steep hills of doubt and fear as most people do. You can, if you will persistently assume: “I am well fed. I am wanted. I am known and everything is as I want it to be.” But remember: to bring all these things into being, there must be a persistent assumption. That’s the story of Jesus.

Now we are told in Jeremiah that God’s word will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind, which is that you become God. “In the later days you will understand it clearly.” It is God’s purpose to give himself to man and he will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. So in the final days he sends a hunger unto your heart – not for bread, a larger home or jewelry – but for the hearing of the Word of God. When this hunger possesses you, nothing will satisfy you but an experience of God. And if it is God’s purpose to give you himself as himself, when you have experienced his Word you are God!

Here is the story: “What is the greatest commandment, master? “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In the original manuscript the word “hear” is “sh’mA” whose last letter is larger than the other letters in the word. This is also true of the world “echaD” (translated “one”) at the end of the sentence. Put the two words together and they spell a word meaning “witness.”

At the very end of the Book of Luke you read: “You are witnesses of these things, but remain here until you are endowed with power from on high.” What power? The power of God called Jesus Christ. You are destined to put on and wear the Lord Christ Jesus as you would a garment. Wait for it, for it will be born within you. And when God’s power and wisdom is born, you will find the sign of his birth in the form of a little child. Then all of these signs will unfold in you and you will wear the garment of Jesus Christ. So I tell you, you will be witnesses of all that I have told you, for now I am returning to the very source out of which I came.

I came into the world completely forgetful of the being that I AM. I had to. When I first met my friend Abdullah back in 1931 I entered a room where he was speaking and when the speech was ended he came over, extended his hand and said: “Neville, you are six months late.” I had never seen the man before, so I said: “I am six months late? How do you know me?” and he replied: “The brothers told me that you were coming and you are six months late.”

I was late because the one who told me of Abdullah was a Catholic priest. I loved him dearly, but I thought he was almost a moron. His father, a rumrunner in the days of prohibition, left him two million dollars, which he proceeded to lose on Wall Street the first year. The only wonderful thing he did was to take the last $15,000 and give it to a Catholic organization to care for his mother the rest of her earthly days. So, having no respect for his judgment, when he told me about Abdullah I postponed going to hear him until one day I could find no excuse. When Ab called me by name I said: “I don’t know you” and he replied: “Oh yes you do, but you have forgotten. We were together in China thousands of years ago, but you promised to completely forget in order to play the part you must play now.”

Last Friday night a lady gave me a letter saying: “The previous Monday as you stood on the platform I could not see you as Neville, but as an ancient Chinese philosopher. I have seen my friends change from moment to moment, but you remained changed during your entire lecture. This bothered me, so I questioned the experience on the way home and then I remembered. Several years ago in a psychic experience, I was walking up a hill with other students to attend a class. Falling away from the group, I saw an ancient Chinese in a white garment at my side. Beckoning me to follow him, we approached a cave where I saw huge granite stone with a peak at the top. Two hands containing a cocoon covered the top of the stone. Removing the cocoon, the ancient Chinese broke it on the peak of the granite, and water, mixed with colorful oil, came out as life took on the sense of heat rising. Then the ancient Chinese took my hand and led me back to the group, where they had not realized that I had been away. “Now I know whose face you wore last Monday night.”

Well, that’s what Abdullah told me in 1931, but to this day I have no knowledge of it, because I swore in the beginning to empty myself completely of all memory and take on the form of a slave, but to have faith in him who sent me. Now knowing that he and I are one, I have no other place to go but back to myself, the sender. Having played every part I have completely wiped out the memory, but I know that no one can arrive at the end of the road until he has played it all. I do know from my intuitive knowledge that, just as an actor must feel the part he is playing and imagine himself the character he is depicting, you will imagine yourself into every part, and when the play is over for you, the signs will come to show you the being that you really are.

You who are here are hungry for the Word of God. You are thirsty for the Word of God. You could be at home this night watching TV and it would cost you nothing, but you have given up your time and your money to be here because of your hunger. I have been sent to tell you not only that you become God when he is fulfilled in you, but how to cushion the blows in this world of reason by delighting in his law. His law is simply a persistent assumption in the claim: “I am what I want to be.” Do not judge one who does not have the hunger for the Word of God, but tell him how to become what he wants to be.

Tell him that the story of Jesus is a perpetual, persistent assumption in whatever he wants to be. That Christ in him is the power of God and his imagination is that power and wisdom. Tell him that imagination knows how to bring his assumption to pass, but that he must persist.

Now I ask you: are you willing to persist in the assumption that you are what you want to be? Or are you going to go home tonight and say: “That was a nice little talk he gave, but after all he has a million dollars in the bank and I have nothing.” If you think that, you are disobedient, for by that thought you have lack of faith in “I am he!” That’s the fundamental sin of the universe. There are only two sins recorded in scripture that offend God. One is: “Unless you believe that I am he you die in your sins,” and the other is eating of the fruit of tree of knowledge of good and evil. Ask our generals tonight if it would be good to stop bombing Vietnam and they would say No. Go across the ocean and ask the Vietnamese and they would say Yes – so what is good and what is evil?

I am not asking anyone but you! What would be good for you? Tell me, because in the end every conflict will resolve itself as the world is simply mirroring the being you are assuming that you are. One day you will be so saturated with wealth, so saturated with power in the world of Caesar, you will turn your back on it all and go in search for the Word of God. I remember when I had so much wealth. I did not have one home, but many, each fully staffed from secretaries to gardeners. That was a life of sheer decadence. I recall walking out of it and not returning. Whether they ever found the body I do not know, but I do know I deliberately walked away. Then about ten years ago in one of my journeys in spirit, I walked back into the world and saw it just as it was before. Strangely enough, everyone recognized me and welcomed me with open arms, but I stayed only for a moment then returned here bringing with me its vivid memory. So I do believe that one must completely saturate himself with the things of Caesar before he is hungry for the Word of God.

I am convinced you are here because of your hunger. I know you have obligations to society, you must pay Caesar’s debts, so you want more money, but your hunger is greater for the hearing of the Word of God than for things of Caesar. That is why you are here, and you are blessed by it.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard  06-06-1969

It is in you as a person that the nature of God is revealed, for a scriptural episode is not a record of an historical event, but a parabolic revelation of truth.  To see Jesus or David as an historical character is to see truth tempered to the weakness of your soul.  You must see what the characters represent, rather than the characters themselves.  This is true for every story in scripture, for every episode will unfold within you.

The title of the 54^th Psalm is translated as “David is hiding with us” in the King James Version, and “David is in hiding among us” in the Revised Standard Version; but the title should read: “David is in hiding within us,” for that is where he is, as well as every character in scripture.  When I say, with Blake: “All that you behold, though it appears without it is within, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow,” I mean that literally, for the drama of life unfolds from within.

The characters Jesus, David, Abraham, and Moses are but personifications of eternal states, which you individually will encounter as you move towards the ultimate awakening of being God himself.  In his poem, “Saul” Robert Browning tells the story recorded in the 16^th chapter of the Book of First Samuel, of how David cured Saul of the evil spirits which the Lord had sent upon him.

Do not see Saul as a man, but as humanity.  He is the human being referred to in the 4^th chapter of the Book of Daniel: “And the great watcher said ‘Hew down the tree, cut off its branches, scatter its leaves and its fruit, but leave the stump.’”  Then the tree becomes personified as: “Let him be watered with the dew from heaven; and let him move with the beasts of the earth.  Take from him the mind of man and give him the mind of a beast.  Let seven times pass over him until he knows that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, even the lowliest of men.”  Saul personifies the mind of the beast, for Saul went insane; he was violent and could not remember who he was.  Then David appears and cures him of his insanity by telling him of the coming of the Messiah, saying:

“O Saul, it shall be

A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand

Shall throw open the gates of a new life to thee!  See the Christ stand!”

You may think this is an episode in the pages of history, but it is a drama, which will take place in you.  As an insane being who is looking for an external savior, one day you will encounter David – he who never walked the face of the earth – and save yourself!

All revelations have the mode of certainty about them.  When David stands before you, you who were insane only a moment before, having forgotten who you are, will remember.  Then, as Saul, you will see the true relationship between you and your son, and the revelation as to who you really are.  Then you who were formerly Saul will become Paul, and say: “Henceforth I regard no one from the human point of view, even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.”

To see Jesus, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, or any of the characters of scripture as men of flesh and blood and external to yourself in the pages of history, is to see truth tempered to the weakness of your soul, because until the revelation takes place, you are unable to stand the force of the light of revelation.  There is nothing more difficult than to give up a fixed idea, especially concerning religion or politics.  Born into a certain religious group, your mother taught you what she was taught by her mother.  The school and church you attend confirms your mother’s words and you believe that the characters of scripture lived in time and space and left behind a record of their physical existence – when it isn’t so at all.  These are all revelations of an eternal drama which is in you, for your true being is your own wonderful human imagination.

Many times I have been asked if I believe there was once a man called Jesus, and I always answer, “No.”  I did believe it, but I no longer believe in the historicity of any character of scripture, for I encounter them as personified states.  I have entered the final state, which is Jesus, and in that state it was revealed to me that I am Jesus and Christ is my son.  Christ, my creative power and wisdom, is the one who was anointed with the oil of gladness and called David.  It was in the spirit that David called Jesus, Father.  He does not do this in flesh for, if you take the events chronologically you will see that they are separated in time by one thousand years – and I tell you the story is contemporary.  It is not something of the past.  The Lord Jesus is with you now at this very moment, for he is your very being, your reality.  We are told that he is a Father in the 17^th chapter of John, as: “Holy Father, keep them in thy name that thou hast given me, that they may be one even as we are one.”  The Father/son is an inner action relationship.  At one moment the son is speaking, and the next moment it is the Father who speaks; then without warning he jumps back to that of the son, and man is confused.  Man thinks of one being of flesh and blood when it is an inner-relationship of Father/son.

I received a letter this week from a lady who is here tonight.  In a vision she saw a man and his young son sitting at a table.  At that moment she knew she was the son and the father and that they were one.  Now, this same lady had another vision in which a friend proclaimed to the crowd in a very loud voice that the lady was pregnant and was bringing forth the Son of God.  She is right, for this lady is bringing forth the Son of God, as she isGod.  This son will be born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.  She is the Jesus of scripture, bringing forth God, and because God is a Father his last gift to her is himself.

If God is the Father and he gives you himself, he gives you his son to reveal it.  So he sends the Spirit of his son into your heart, crying: “Father.”  And if God’s son calls you Father, then you must be God.  And if God the Father is the Lord Jesus and Christ is his anointed one, then your son is David, for he is the one the Lord anointed, and proclaimed: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”  This comes as a great shock to those who were raised in the Christian or Jewish faith, for there is no more historicity in the characters of the Old Testament then there is in the New.  Every character represents an eternal state through which you, an individual, must pass in your journey from darkness to light.  And when you come to the journey’s end you move into the state personified as God the Father.

David is in hiding within us.  This we are told by the Ziphites, of the tribe of Judah.  If you read scripture correctly you will see that the only son of Jacob mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus is Judah.  This brings us to Saul, who was notified that David was hiding within him.  As an insane man, Saul could not understand.  If David is hiding within me, where do I look for him?  But wait.  David will come out.  I know.  At one moment in time there will be an explosion within you which will release David, who is hiding in you, for we are all the insane of Daniel.  Look at the world today and ask yourself if we aren’t all insane, when we murder each other and cheat one another – when there really is no other.  The prayer is that they be one as we are one.  That is because they do not realize we are all one being.  Nothing can bring you to this realization other than the revelation of the son to the Father.

I know so many of you are bringing forth the Son of God.  Another lady in this audience tonight wrote saying she was sleeping at the home of a friend, when she sees a baby boy, devoid of clothes, lying on a blanket.  As she picks it up she hears the doorbell ring.  Answering the door with the child in her arms, she sees her daughter, who says: “Mother, put some clothes on your baby because I have brought a friend.”  As they enter the house the friend pats the baby on the back and says: “What a beautiful child.”  She returns to the room and as she covers the baby with a blanket (the swaddling cloth) she awakens.  This is a wonderful adumbration forecasting the real event recorded in scripture.  Then she will know the truth concerning the birth of God.

Another lady saw the child as her sister’s boy.  Holding it close she looked into its face, which turned into that of a cherub, who smiled at her.  Then she knew she could not give the child up as it was hers.  This, too, is an adumbration.  All of these are foreshadowing.  These ladies are all mothers with children of their own.  The last lady has five children; yet the child of their vision is spiritual, for the whole Bible from beginning to end is a supernatural document and not an historical fact as man has been led to believe.

If you see Jesus as an historical character, it is because you do not have the courage to face the brilliant light of the revelation of truth.  I know when it came to me, everything within me fell.  We are told that in the end all of the buildings will fall.  These buildings are the structures of the mind by which we live.  The belief in the historicity of Jesus is a building; the belief in the historicity of the Bible is a building.  Externalized as churches and cathedrals, they are beautiful, but they will all fall within you in your last days.  And from their ashes that which is permanent will rise, for from then on you will not live by any external belief.  You will know that everything unfolds from within.

The story is told that Judas would go into a garden and give a sign designating the one who holds the secret.  The sign was a kiss.  You will find this story in the 14^th chapter of the Book of Mark.  When you read it you may think this is an episode which took place in some historical past, but it is not.  It is something you will experience.  Then you will discover that the drama is contemporaneous.  It is with us now, for I have had that experience.

I am teaching the word of God from experience, therefore, I am the word that went out.  I sent it out from myself by clothing myself in flesh (for the Word became flesh and dwells within).  When all that the Word implies unfolded in me I told my experiences to a group of twelve men, and when one departed I knew he was going to reveal my teaching.  Then a handsome, wonderful man entered to fulfill the 14^th [chapter] of Mark: “This is the sign I give you.  The one I shall kiss is the man.  Treat him kindly, but do not let him go.” (If this is the truth don’t let go, for it is the truth that I am going to kiss.)  Approaching me, the man extends his arms in adoration, embraces me, and kisses me on the left side of my neck.

Now, the word “Judah” means, “to praise with extended arms.”  It was Judah who embraced and kissed me, he severed my sleeve revealing the arm of the Lord, thus fulfilling scripture.  “And who has believed our report?  To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”  The arm is the symbol of the creative power of God.  That is what was revealed in its beautiful imagery.  Here was a handsome man, about forty, gloriously dressed, fulfilling everything scripture said he would do when he comes.  Believe my words, for they are true.  Let everything you formerly believed in go – but do not let the word of truth go.

I know it is difficult to give up the belief in the historicity of scripture.  When I first came to Los Angeles it was back in 1945.  At the time I was invited by a very prominent man in the metaphysical field to conduct a series of lectures on the Bible.  The night I arrived, I was to address 400 or 500 of his graduates.  About five minutes before I took the platform, the man took me aside and told me that I could not speak on the non-historicity of the Bible, because he teaches the Bible as history and did not want his people disturbed.  I thanked him, told him that because I was his guest I would abide by his decision this night, but in the future he could not tell me what to say.  Then I reminded him of scripture: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge.”  I can only speak of what I have seen and heard.  I know the Bible is not historically true, but is eternally true.  The records recorded there are forever and to be experienced by all.

Scripture is a revelation of truth which carries with it such certainty it cannot be denied.  Having heard the truth from someone who has experienced it, you may feel my message is too much to grasp; but when it happens in you doubt leaves, for you know the truth from experience.  Every story is true, but not as recorded.  They were not writing secular history, but divine or sacred history, which is forever.  It is not something that happened in the past or that will come; the climax has been reached and is always being reached every moment in time.

The Jesus of scripture is seated here tonight.  And his son, bearing witness to his Fatherhood, is hiding in you.  In the 54^th Psalm, Saul was told that David was hiding within, just as I am telling you now.  David is hiding in you and will come out when an explosion takes place within you.  And when you see David he will be standing.  That is why I believe Browning had the experience, because the symbolism he used is perfect.  “See the Christ stand!”  When I saw David I was seated but he was standing.

The word “Christ” means the “the messiah.”  Standing before Saul, David tells of the coming of the messiah, saying: “His face will be like my face.  He will be a man like me.  You are going to love the messiah and he will love you forever.”  This relationship between you and David is one of infinite love and it is forever.  Here David is telling Saul that he is the messiah, for he is the Christ, the anointed of the Lord.  Then he said: “A hand just like this hand will open the door of a new life to you.”  And standing before him, he says: “See the Christ stand” – but Saul could not understand.

Those who read Browning miss this point because it is in conflict with their fixed ideas concerning Jesus.  They think he is the Christ, but I tell you: Jesus is God the Father whose final revelation to man is the gift of himself.  God gives himself to you by sending his son into your heart, crying: “Father,” thus revealing your true identity.  Until then you do not know that you are Jesus and remain confused by the hearing of many different beliefs.

I speak of this only from the platform where you come to hear it, but I would never go into your home and volunteer this information.  That would be silly and completely out of order.  I would be taking my pearls and throwing them before those who are not yet qualified to receive them, so I do not disturb them.  But you who know it are called upon to voice what you know.  And you who are moved to teach – teach the true words of the pattern which I have given you, but do change the pattern.  Paul called the pattern “my gospel.”  Paul was very proud of the fact that he was born a Jew, saying: “I was born of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.”  Then the whole thing unfolded within him and he realized the non-historicity of his own great Book, yet its truth.  He recognized the characters recorded there as eternal state through which every individual must pass.

One day you will experience the state of Abraham and know what faith really is.  When you see that giant of a man leaning against a tree, you will see a serpent wound around its trunk.  The serpent will have a human face with the wisest expression.  (In Genesis the serpent is recorded as the wisest of all of God’s creatures.)  And you will see Abraham’s eyes are looking into time, as recorded in the Book of Galatians: “The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify all by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.”  So, before the events took place Abraham was shown the end, and when you look at him his attention is focused, not on the distance of space, but of time.  And the tree under which he stands looks like the human brain.  When you see Abraham you will know you are seeing the beginning of the journey.  Wisdom is present in the form of a serpent and faith is present in the form of Abraham.  His name is changed from Abram – which means “exalted Father” to Abraham – which means “father of the multitude.”  The change occurred when the letter “He” was added.  This letter carries the symbol of grace.  So grace was put into the name to indicate that God had given himself to his creation (the work of his hand.)  Putting the gift of grace into the name of the father of the multitudes, the journey begins.

So, when you read scripture try to bear in mind that you are reading about infinite states of consciousness, which are eternal.  Remember you are Jesus, and when you find the Christ you have found the Lord’s anointed, who is David.  You will know him for he will come to you in the spirit and call you Father.  How then can you be his son?  Because the words Father/son are interchangeable.  “I and my Father are one.  He who sees me (the son) sees the Father.”  Always keep this in mind when reading scripture.

If you will accept what I have told you this night, life will be much easier for you.  Knowing this truth, you can’t pass the buck any more; but knowing you are the Lord you can do anything, because you are all imagination and imagining creates reality.  You can imagine anything and sustain it with faith.  As you walk in the faith that that which you have imagined is so, it will become so.  This I know from experience.

Back in 1943 when I came out of the army I was looking for an apartment.  My wife and I had determined how much we were going to pay for it, but when we found the apartment the rent was more than we had planned to pay.  Realizing this, my wife said: “Well, that’s not demonstrating this principle, is it.”  I said nothing.  I simply paid the months of September and October, but when I went to pay the November rent the manager said: “I have an apology to make to you.  An authority of the city came in and looked over my books.  He discovered that the apartment you have was formerly rented for less.”  Then he quoted the new rent figure to me, which was to the dollar the amount I had originally chosen to pay.  It took me three months of being faithful to what I had imagined I was paying, even though during that time I was paying more.  But, since the reduced rent was retroactive to the day I moved in, I got it all back at the beginning of the third month.

I committed myself in my imagination, to what I was going to pay.  I went looking, and because I was going to pay more – in his eyes – he gave me all kinds of concessions he would not have done had I paid him what the former tenant did.  First of all he allowed us to pick out the wallpaper, the colors and rooms we wanted painted.  He even built a bookshelf for me which covered an entire wall, for all my books.  He did everything I wanted; but if I had gone in there and gotten the rent for the amount I said I would pay, he would not have built the bookcase for me, given me the wallpaper, or painted the entire apartment to my specifications.  Only then was the rent reduced to the amount I had imagined it to be, and we remained there almost fourteen years.

I tell you: imagination will not fail you if you are faithful.  What could I say when I was confronted with the negation of my assumption?  Nothing.  I simply would not give up, and when the time was right my assumption became a fact.  I urge you to set your goal high.  Assume the feeling it has been reached and sleep in that feeling.  Persist and I promise you that not one thing in this world can rob you of that which you have assumed.  But the most important thing is to know that which is housed within you is God’s plan of redemption, and he only redeems himself.  God came down into the world and housed himself in you.  Now he is going to discover who he is, for it is in you as a person that the nature of God is revealed.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 12/16/1968

In his poem called “Europe,” which is a prophecy about you, William Blake said: “Then Enitharmon woke, nor knew that she had slept, and eighteen hundred years were fled as if they had not been.”

Told in the form of a story, Blake used the name “Enitharmon” to express any emanating desire or image. Enitharmon is the emanation of Los, who – in the story – had the similitude of the Lord and all imagination. Entering into his image (his Enitharmon), Los dreams it into reality; and when he awoke he knew not that he had slept, yet eighteen hundred years had fled.

In my case, 1,959 years had fled as though they had not been. And I had no idea I had entered into an image called Neville and made it real. But I, all imagination, so loved the shadow I had cast, I entered into it and made it alive.

To those in immortality I seemed to be as one sleeping on a couch of gold, but to myself I was a wanderer. Although lost in dreary night, I kept the divine vision in time of trouble. I kept on dreaming I was Neville until I awoke, not knowing I had slept; yet 1,959 years had fled as though they had not been.

Blake tells us that in the beginning we were all united with God in a death like his. Then we heard the story and entered into our shadows. Now, a shadow is a representation, either in painting or drama, in distinction from the reality portrayed. Paul recognized the shadow when he asked the Galatians: “Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun with the spirit are you now ending with the flesh, by seeing Jesus Christ as someone on the outside?”

Having heard the story of Jesus Christ, you are called upon to enter into it as the central character and remain there until the story externalizes itself.

God destined us, in love, to be his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will. Falling in love with his image, God entered it and became his son. Having declared what he was going to do, God does it through his pattern called Jesus Christ.
Knowing what you want, when you conceive a scene that implies you have it, that objective becomes the pattern for your desire to unfold. Jesus Christ is God’s pattern, his purpose which he set forth for the fullness of time. Christ is the plan, the image God entered and made so real he claims he is the image.

God’s plan has completely unfolded in me. When I awoke I knew not that I had slept, and 1,959 years were fled as though they had not been. This is true for every child born of woman, for we were all gathered together and united with him in a death like his; therefore, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Blake, writing in 1794, knew that 1,800 years had fled when he – Enitharmon – awoke. Blake knew he was the emanation, the shadow God entered and identified himself with. Blake tells us it was the image that awoke, knowing not that she had slept.

The emanation is always feminine. Eve came out of Adam. Every desire is feminine, regardless of what it is, be it a house, money, or a new car. Imagination is the male, which must leave every doubt, every thought of impossibility behind, and cleave to the desired emanation until they are one. To do this, imagination must enter into the shadow and remain there until there is only the awareness of being or possessing the fulfilled desire.

In this world of Caesar it could take an hour, a day, a week, or a month, to awaken the desire within and project it on the screen of space. But you must enter into the image and remain there, just as God did in the foundation of time, in order to make you, himself. God so became me, that when He awoke in the tomb, I did not know I had slept. In fact, I did not know I had been placed there, as I had become so one with it.

In his book of Milton, Blake tells us that when he entered into his shadow, he appeared to those in immortality as one asleep on a couch of gold. But to himself he was a wanderer, lost in dreary night. Is that not the story of everyone? Lost and confused, imagination is faithful to the image he has assumed, saying: I am John, I am Ray, or I am Natalie.

Now in the image of the being I fell in love with, Neville is my emanation, my shadow, and the image I have been faithful to. Many a time I have thought myself a wanderer in dreary night, confused and not knowing where to turn for a dollar. But those who contemplate on death saw me as one asleep on a couch of gold. They knew the purpose behind my entering into the state of sleep, but they did not know what I was experiencing.

You are in this world because you are in love with the being you believe yourself to be. You may say that is not true, but I say it is impossible for thought greater than itself to know. Do not believe anyone who claims to know. Do not believe anyone who claims to love someone else more than they do themselves, for they do not. It is impossible for thought to be greater than the image it believes itself to be. Yes, you want companionship, security, and health, for these are all part of the image you fell in love with and entered.

You are now alive because you – a living being – have given the image called by your earthly name, life. And you will transform it into a life-giving spirit, because that is what you really are. Before this drama called life began, you predetermined a perfect pattern called Jesus Christ, which would lead you back to where you were prior to entering into the image.

Now, in this world a man who wants to be a success in business can sit down and map out a pattern (a scene) which would imply he has the success he desires. Then if he enters the scene and believes its truth, the pattern of success will unfold and the world will confirm it. But he must persist in the image of success, just as God has persisted, for the day will come when God will awaken and express the success he believes himself to be.

God enters into the image of every child born of woman to give it life. At that moment God’s real and immortal self is – to those who dwell in immortality – as one sleeping on a couch of gold; but to himself he seems a wanderer, lost in dreary night. The day will come when he will awake and – unknown to him, 1800 or 2000 years will have fled as if they had not been.

Use the same technique God used to become you. As one whose name forever is I AM, God fell in love with you, his image, and entered it. Now knowing you are, you say I am; so God is occupying his image and now answers to the name you were given at birth.

Intrigued by the idea of expressing himself in a body of flesh and blood, God entered this body by dreaming he is Neville. God laid himself down within me to sleep, and as he slept he dreamed he was I; for 1,959 years later, when God awoke, I knew not that I had slept. And, upon reflection, it was as though it had not been; for when God achieved his objective (which was to awake) and was conscious of the fact that he was the one he loved, all time vanished.

Before awakening there are barriers that separate God and his image, but once his objective is achieved, God awakes to the awareness that He and his image are one. This is the story the world celebrates and calls Christmas.

Christmas is not the incarnation of God, but the awakening of man as God. Having fallen asleep and entering his image, God made it a living being. In Blake’s case it took 1800 years. Why does it take one 2,000 and another 1,000 years to awaken? It depends upon the degree God is lost in the dream.

To what degree are you lost in your dream of success? Your world is your dream pushed out. When you can persuade yourself 100% that you are successful, success is yours! You must become so intense that you completely forget it was only a desire. You must tame the wild, new state you have entered until its naturalness causes you to forget all else. That is how God became you.

Jesus Christ, God’s pattern of salvation begins to unfold as you awake and resurrect from the tomb God entered. Being life itself, God entered you – his shadow, which has no life of its own – and made it alive. Entering death’s door, his image – God – lay down in the grave of that image, in visions of eternity until he awakes.

In the Old Testament, the question is asked: “Rouse thyself, O Lord, awake. Why cast us off forever?” And in the New Testament, the Lord awakens to discover he is one with the image he fell in love with. Having fallen in love with being you, individually, when God awakes, you are He. That is Christmas.

When God incarnated himself in the image he so fell in love with, time was divided between BC and AD. Blake tells us that for him, it took 1800 years for God to move from BC to AD. In my case it was 1,959 years. Each case is different, as we are told: “Each in his own order.” I do not know whether this order was predetermined or not, for the Book of Ephesians tells us that he destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

The God that dreamed in me is the same God that dreams in you. Was it really an order that I could not have awakened before 1959? I do not know. I only know that was the year in which God awoke in me, yet I did not know I had fallen asleep in that skull. But when I emerged, the symbolism recorded as revealing the birth of God surrounded me. That was the moment God awoke and was born into a higher region of his being. Having identified himself with the one he loved, that one was raised and born as God.

God is in love with his image, his shadow, which – like a reflection on oil or water – is dead. Having no life in itself, God so loves his shadow he enters it and dreams he is it. Being a life-giving spirit, God first animates the shadow and it becomes solid and real in his world. He walks and talks, knows sorrow and joy, sickness and health, until the dream is complete. Then God awakens a pattern by which he will know he has arrived at the end.

This pattern was predetermined. The first segment is to awaken and rise from his sleep of death, to be designated Son of God in power. Then he discovers his fatherhood when his son calls him father. A short interval later he cuts himself in two. This is his sacrifice for this wonderful accomplishment. Fusing with his blood, which he finds at the base of his spine, God ascends as a fiery serpent. Then the final sanctification comes in the form of a dove, which descends and smothers him with love, for God has now accomplished what he set out to do.

You can imitate God while here in this world. If, for example you desire to be a great artist, acclaimed throughout the country, map out a plan of success, just as God mapped out a plan of fulfillment which he called Jesus Christ. There are multiple ways to imagine success. Choose a scene which would imply you already have achieved success and when it unfolds, you will know how it came about. Do this, and you are testing the infinite power that you really are.

Having entered the shadow that I conceive myself to be, I walk the earth wondering where the next dollar is coming from; yet those in great eternity see me as dreaming on a golden couch. But I am still faithful and keep the divine vision in time of trouble. Then, like a woman in labor who bears its pains, after the child is born the pain is forgotten in the job of fulfillment, so it is when Christmas comes and you – individualized – become God.

The same technique God used to make you real can be used to bring your desire into being. Blake said: “If the spectator could only enter into the image in his imagination, approaching it on the fiery chariot of contemplative thought; if he could only make a friend and companion of one of these images, he would rise from the grave and meet his Lord in the air and then he would be happy.”

God entered into his image, therein giving us life. Being a life-giving spirit, God wants us to be just as he is, so he mapped out the pattern that through it we may be God. When we completely fulfill his predetermined pattern, the barrier will be torn down and we will be one with infinity.

Christmas as celebrated by the Christian world is not Christmas. It is not something that takes place on the outside. Christmas consists of a series of events which begin when God awakens within the shadow He entered. Rising, God desires to come out; and since all things are possible to God, He pushes, and a seemingly unbreakable seal falls away and infinite power comes out.

The predetermined symbolism must be there. If it isn’t, then the vision is an adumbration indicating nearness. It is a shadow cast before coinciding with the actual vision.

These visions are recorded in the four gospels, of which three were written in or about 150 AD. Scholars believe the Book of John was written at the end of the first century, however, making it possible for him to draw on the source material of all the others.

John eliminates the story of a genealogy, or virgin birth, but emphasizes the need of rebirth. He doesn’t tell you how it is done, but using the word anothin, he tells you the birth is from above.

There are two births: The first is from the womb of woman and the second from the tomb above, and each birth is essential. Also, you must rise in the same manner as Moses raised the serpent in the desert.

John claims that God Himself became you, saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and dwells in us.” Here we see that God became flesh – as you are – and says, “I am”. So God is incarnated as an animated being, but that is not enough. He wants you to be as He is, and God is a life-giving spirit. In order to do this his pattern must be fulfilled. And when it is, you enter an entirely different sphere, called the kingdom of heaven.

Having fallen in love with your image, God entered that shadow and made it alive by falling asleep. Now dreaming he is human, he loves you – the being you identify with today. You may not be in love with being poor, but that is not you! You could be rich if that is your desire, but you are in love with being yourself! You would not give up your individuality for any other being. You may desire to have what someone else has, but not if you have to give up your identity.

At one time, that which you have so identified yourself with was only a shadow, an image God entered. It was dead, and by God’s entry, He made it a living being. And when God awakes, that living being becomes a life-giving spirit.

If it is a true awakening, and not just a fore-shadowing, the drama called Jesus Christ will unfold in 1,260 days, as foretold in scripture. Do not be discouraged if your visions are fore-shadowings; the promise will be fulfilled, for you are keeping the vision in time of trouble. At times, like Peter you may have denied that you are God, but you are still keeping the divine vision.

I fell in love with being Neville, as you fell in love with the being you are now. You have dreamed poverty into being, health, being loved, being ignored, but you have never lost your vision of individuality You will never lose it, for that is the one you fell in love with. And in the end you will awaken as God, individualized. You will know yourself to be a life-giving spirit as you move towards ever greater and greater individualization. That is the purpose of the entire drama, and that is what Christmas means.

When it will happen I do not know. Blake certainly was not 1800 years old judged by the world of Caesar. He was born in 1757 and wrote his poem, “Europe” in 1794. Blake was speaking of that second birth, believing that if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall be united with him in a resurrection like his. Blake looked upon this division of time between BC and AD as the beginning, claiming he was one with God when, falling in love with his image, he became universally diffused individuality. Starting as we did, the God in him took 1800 years to complete the drama and awaken.

In his poem, “Europe,” Blake speaks of the cavern man and his five openings. His eyes, which see only a small section of infinity. His ears, which will hear the music of the heavens. His breath and mouth, totaling four; but Blake does not tell us where the fifth one is. He does, however, tell us that through this opening man may leave at any time and return, but man does not choose to do so. What is that one but imagination? Standing here, I can imagine myself elsewhere. What opening do I use to imagine myself there? The fifth one of the five openings of the cavern man.

Soon the Christian world will celebrate this wonderful mystery, which is completely misunderstood. But one day you, individuality, will experience scripture and know the true mystery of Christmas. Then you, too, will say I woke and knew not that I had slept.

The sensation is one of waking, not resurrection. You know you are in your tomb, yet your skull. Because of an innate knowledge, you will push from within, and the stone will roll away as you are born from above.

Three witnesses will be there; two will deny your birth, and one will confirm it, for you are fulfilling scripture: “Where two or more persons agree in testimony, it is conclusive.” One witness declares you as the father of the sign, the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. You – the father – witness the event, and scripture – the written word of God – bears you out; so you have three witnesses, all agreeing in testimony: the Bible, you, and a third.

This is the story of Christmas, the time when the prophecy made to you before that the world was, is fulfilled.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 09-19-1969

In the 37th chapter of Genesis we read the story of Joseph, a dreamer whose dreams always came true. His father, Israel, loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and made him a long robe with sleeves. Now I ask you, who is Joseph? He is the foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, your true identity. Historical evidence for Jesus, the man, is nonexistent, yet he is the only reality and the true identity of every child born of woman. When you say within yourself, “I am,” that is Jesus Christ, he who is dreaming this whole vast world into being. 

One day you will understand this truth, for:

“Real are the dreams of gods
And smoothly pass their pleasure
In the long, immortal dream.”

Your thoughts are your dreams, which weave your world into being and sustain it. You and I are inserted into the dream. “`Tis we who, lost in stormy visions fight with phantoms, an unprofitable strife.” And we will continue the dream until we awaken to discover that we are the dreamer, who is God himself.

This is not an idle dream, but one designed for the divine purpose of extending imagination’s creative power. Expanding by entering his dream, God appears as you and I. And he is going to awaken from his dream, and, because there is only God, although we number into the billions we will all be resolved into the one Lord God Jehovah, who is Jesus Christ.

Now, Joseph could dream and interpret the dreams of others, regardless of their complexities. Certain dreams are simple and need no interpretation, but most of our dreams are symbolic and few understand the language of symbolism. Joseph understood and interpreted the dream of the sheaves as well as his dream of the sun, the moon and eleven stars bowing before him. When his father heard the dream he said, “What is this dream? Shall I and your mother and brothers bow down to you?” He didn’t criticize him, but set these things in his heart.

Now, in the state of Moses the name Joseph is changed to Joshua, which is the Hebraic form of the Anglicized word, “Jesus”, or “Jehovah saves.” So here we find Joseph the dreamer, becoming Jesus the savior, by awakening from the dream he dreamed, interpreted, and fulfilled.

Right now you think this room is real, and tonight you might have a dream and – if you are lucky – remember it as a dream, but not as reality. Well, if to dream is to dwell in unreality not knowing it as such, what is life but one uninterrupted dream? Until you have certain experiences, you will no doubt question my sanity, but when you have them you will know that this which seems real is no less a dream than the dream of the night.

Travel with me in your mind as we read the morning paper. On the first page we read of an air crash, a war, a hold-up, a murder, and embezzlement. Turn the page to the social column. See the pictures of the bride and groom and read all about their wedding and the guests attending. Another page lists the deaths, and finally we turn to the financial page, which tells us who is making money and who is losing it. Isn’t that disjointed? Lost in the reading, we have traveled from violence to a wedding, to gossip, deaths, and finance. All written by ten or twelve men who are sound asleep, and dreaming their columns into being, while you – and the millions who read the paper – will see the outpicturing of all that you thought during the reading.

How do I know this? Because I have awakened from the dream of life. I know that God laid himself down within me to sleep, to dream that he is I; for when he awoke, I was he! How do I know that I am he? Because his only begotten son, David, called me father.

While I remain in this body of blood and flesh, I must abide by its restrictions and limitations; yet remembering it is a dream, I can change it. If this world is reality I cannot change it; but if I am its reality, I can change my world relative to myself. I can imagine a desire fulfilled and watch it come to pass in my outer world. But first I had to know it was a dream. This I do know, for he who is in the depth of my own being said to me: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed that I am you.” Yes, he dreamed that he is I, for he awoke and he was I. A few months later he revealed his mystery to me by bringing his son David to call me father. Through an innate wisdom I knew he wasn’t just a boy who called me father, but the David of Biblical fame who is God’s only son.

When God awakes within you he is the same God who awoke within me. There aren’t two Gods. You and I are really one. Although there appears to be billions of us here, we are all one being, one God acting out this play, to expand our creative power and wisdom.

A very dear friend of mine is in the audience tonight. I am so thrilled for him and for anyone who comes and has such an experience and shares it with me. This is his experience. While in his living room watching TV he felt drowsy, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to fall asleep. Remembering he was watching TV, he finds himself driving his car with his wife at his side. Feeling a sense of impending disaster, as his wife grabbed the wheel he awoke in the dream, and succeeded in getting control of the wheel again. Up ahead he saw a man he recognized as a great actor, and suddenly remembering where he was when the dream began, he inwardly proclaimed I AM. At that moment he awoke seated on his chair facing the TV. Then he said, “Since this is the first time I awoke in a dream to know who I am and where I am, I can’t help but be pleased with myself.” Well, he should be. All of these experiences are little breakages to the brain that bind us to the dream, which means that he is on the verge of awakening from this dream of life.

Unnumbered times I have sat in my chair and found myself slipping into what reason tells me I should not see. I have stepped into that world; it closes around me and becomes just as real as this. I am in a terrestrial world, talking to people who are just as solid and real as you are and I am. Awake, I am aware of where I was when I entered this section of time. and I also know that there is no road to take me back to the year and place I left.

You see, all things are taking place now. Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. Entering a certain section of the dream, we animate it and become aware of that which already is. The past has not ceased to be. It is taking place as it took place and still takes place when anyone enters that section of time. The same is true with the future. The year 1969 finds us standing on the moon. It always has been so. The world is, and we are placed upon this little space called earth to learn to bear the beams of love, for God is infinite love. I know, for I stood in His presence, then came down and entered a specter in order to learn to love and take on substance.

Not long ago I was in another section of time instructing a group of maybe a dozen men all seated around me. In the center with me was a spectrum, a shadow of a man. I could move him about and do with him as I willed. Then I said to him, “Go and love. To the degree that you love, you will acquire substance. Only then can you take part in the drama and awake with life in yourself.”

What I said to those men I say to you now. At the present time you are only an animated being, not a life-giving spirit. One day you will acquire substance (acquire love) then you will become one with life in your self, knowing that all things were made through the creative act of love (the act of mercy) and without it was not anything made. As life-giving spirits we all return to the one being as that one being, yet retaining our own identity. We will never lose our identity, but rather we will grow ever-greater individualization.

While In San Francisco, a chap who attended my meetings there told me a story. One hot summer’s day he stopped in a bar for a nice cold beer. Taking the only unoccupied seat at the bar, he was soon visiting with the man sitting next to him who told him this story. “The strangest thing happened to me years ago and it haunts me still. I was wounded during the Korean War and shipped to a hospital in Japan. While lying on that bed in the hospital and knowing I am an American, I felt the room fade from my view and suddenly I am in Europe, dancing with a lady who is dressed, like all the other ladies there, in hoop skirts. Knowing who I am, I said to my dancing partner, `You know, this is a dream,’ and with that remark she became frightened. As people gathered around me I told them that I was really an American soldier who was wounded in a hospital in Japan. I even told them what year it was, but to them the year had not yet arrived so the crowd became angry and I decided it was time to leave. So I simply assumed I was on my bed in the hospital in Japan, and when I opened my eyes, I was there.”

This man hasn’t yet completely awakened, but one day he will awaken from this dream that seems so consistent, just as you will. And when you do, you will experience every precept of scripture in what the world will call a dream.

Now, the 6th chapter of I Timothy tells us that “The love of money is the root of all evil,” and in the 13th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, Paul tells us to: “Keep your life free from the love of money.” When I was a little boy in the island of Barbados, every Sunday four of us boys would ride a big male donkey we used to sire horses to produce mules, down to my grandmother’s house, where she would give each of us a coin. I received a penny. When we got out of my grandmother’s sight, a man would meet us with a female donkey, and for my penny he would get on the back of his donkey and we would have wild ride home as our jackass chased his female donkey. This went on for a long time before my mother found out, and then she said: “You know, Nev, you aren’t going to have anything, for you give everything away.” I knew, intuitively, that the love of money was the root of all evil.

Now, to show how scripture fulfills itself in experience, I will share with you now a recent waking dream of mine. I knew where my physical body was, and I knew what year it was, but I found myself standing on a street corner holding an enormous packet of bills of all denominations. As a woman passed by she reached over and grabbed some of my money. In her eagerness, several bills floated away from her and were grabbed by the other people passing by. Suddenly this lady became very angry and demanded that they all give her money back to her! She had just stolen it from me, but was now accusing the others of stealing it from her! Isn’t that life? A man can trace the ownership of his property back to his forefather’s who stole it, but he would be as mad as can be if a relative of the original owner tried to reclaim his property.

Now, in my dream I kept on moving through the labyrinthine ways of my mind, objectifying what I am encountering. Suddenly a man approached and asked if I wanted a taxi. Still holding my money I refused his invitation. Then many men began to gather around me and when I saw their faces, and their knives, I realized they were going to take my money as well as my life, so I reminded myself of where I was when I began the dream. I knew that if I awoke I would defeat their intention. I would survive, but none of us would get the money. The moment my decision was made, I dropped the money and returned to my bed. Now I know the truth of the statement, “The love of money is the root of all evil” for my vision is part of the eternal structure of the universe.

You, too, will have a vision such as mine after you have lost all desire for money. Yes, you will desire the necessary means to meet the needs of Caesar: to pay rent, taxes, and buy food and clothing; but you will know that you don’t need a billion to meet them. Those who are hungry for more and more billions are sound asleep. If they heard what I am telling you now they would think me insane; but I would tell them that their dreams reveal a far deeper insanity, for they are sound asleep, believing their dreams to be reality.

Now, in the story, Jesus [sic] was a dreamer whose father so loved him he made him a robe with long sleeves. I wondered what was the importance of the sleeves, and then one night I had this experience. I was teaching the great mystery of God when a man entered the room and severed the sleeve of my robe to expose my right arm from the shoulder to my fingertips. The next morning I turned to the Book of Isaiah and read, “Who will believe our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” That night the sleeve of the robe worn by Joseph the dreamer, was severed, revealing my arm – the symbol of my imaginative power.

I know, now, that I – all imaginative power – have awakened from the dream. I know that is what you are also. I am trying to convince you of this, and ask you to test yourselves. If this world is real, you can’t change it, for you cannot change reality; but you can change a dream. Feel the changes have now come upon you. Immerse yourself in that feeling and sustain it. If this is a dream, that which you are feeling will produce objective facts for others to see as real. But you will remember its origin was a dream. Once it becomes objective and real, don’t get lost in the dream, for like all dreams, it will fade away. Everything comes into being, waxes, wanes, and vanishes. A tree may be 8000 years old, but it will eventually die. The stars are melting away because they are the dreams of the gods and

“Real are the dreams of gods
And smoothly pass their pleasure
In a long, immortal dream.”

Imagination (gods) brought the world into being and sustains it while this grand experiment is taking place. We are those gods (called sons) who collectively form God the Father.

No child is born that is not clothing a son of God, as told us in the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy. “He has put bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God.” A child could not breathe without God’s entrance as his breath. “God himself enters death’s door, the human skull, and lays down in the grave of man in visions of eternity until he awakes and sees the linen clothes lying there that the females wove for him at the gate of his Father’s house.”

When I entered this garment that my mother – a female – wove for me, God – whose name is I AM – entered with me and began his dream. My mother called me Neville, and as time went by, I began to claim that I am Neville. Then one day we became one new being, for the “I” who entered the garment named Neville awoke to discover I am God. Then to prove to myself that I truly am He, God’s son appeared before me and called me Father. Now, restrained by the body that I wear, I am limited and weak. But when I take it off and the world calls me dead, I will return to the one being out of which I came, for I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.

If you know that you are God the Father, you will know that it does not matter what the world dreams. No matter how horrible the dream may appear to be, the dreamer is untouched by his dream. He who dreamed he was Stalin and murdered millions, is untouched by his dream and in the end will discover that all things work towards God’s awakening.

The plea in the 44th Psalm “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou O Lord. Awake. Do not cast us off forever,” is directed to God, the God in everyone who is struggling to awaken. He is waking in my friend Bill, who had the experience of driving his car, knowing he was seated in his living room. These kinds of experiences break the threads that bind one to his dream, and as these threads begin to break he awakes within his own skull, for that is where the drama takes place.

Now in the story, when Joseph joined his brothers, they said to one another: “Let us kill him.” But his brother, Judah pleaded for his life, saying: “No, he is our flesh and blood. Do not let his blood be upon us. Let us sell him into slavery.” So they stripped him of his robe and threw him into a pit. Then a caravan, on its way to Egypt carrying gold, incense, and myrrh (the same things the kings brought to the Christ child at his birth) agreed to buy him; and Joseph was taken into Egypt, where he rose to the power of Pharaoh. Joseph then saved civilization from starvation. And when the brothers were sorry for what they had done, Joseph said: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Then his name was changed from Joseph to Joshua, which means Jesus.

Remember, scripture unfolds within you. The dreamer in you has been thrown into a pit. Now, in the 40th Psalm (which is so often used in the New Testament concerning Jesus) the 2nd verse reads: “They raised me up from the pit, out of the miry bog and placed my feet upon the rock, making my steps secure.” The word “mire” is defined as “spongy earth.” Can you think of anything that better describes the human brain? And man is called the earth, for the word “Adam” means “red earth.” So the dreamer is taken out of the pit – the skull where he has been locked in – by awakening from his dream and being born from above.

You must experience two births: a physical one and a spiritual one. You are spiritually born through the awakening and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is not another being born; you are he; for you are all alone, and when you leave your tomb is empty.

The New Testament is all about the dreamer in you who awakens as Jesus Christ, and everything said of him is true. His history is divine, not secular.

You will never find any evidence of an historical Christ here on earth. Bishop Pike went looking, yet never found who Christ really is. The Pope, as well as the leaders of all Christian religions, have millions of people looking to them as guides; yet they are all blind leaders of the blind. The historical evidence of Christ as a man is nonexistent, yet he is the only reality and the true identity of every child born of woman.

You are Jesus Christ, sleeping, dreaming horrible dreams mixed with lovely ones; but in the end you will awaken from the dream to know you are Jesus Christ. You will then remain a little while to tell your experiences to those who are willing to be disillusioned and will allow their false ideas of the past to fall away; then you will leave this little shadow that walks across the earth to enter eternity as God.

What I have told you will live in your minds. Hold fast to the visions I have shared with you, for in time my Word will take root and grow within you. Then this wonderful story will erupt in you, and you will know you, too, are Jesus Christ. And, because there is only one Jesus Christ and only one son, when God’s son calls you Father, you and I are one. That is the fantastic mystery. How we, retaining our individuality, are one!

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 2-28-1969

When asked: “What must we do to be doing the work of God?” he answered: “Believe in him whom he has sent.” That’s all you have to do. Salvation is yours when you believe in him. There is no aristocracy of privilege, and to believe that Jesus exists means nothing. The question is: can you believe in his story?

He tells us he was sent, and everyone who is sent is Jesus, the sender. Those who are called from the world of death do not volunteer or choose the task. They are selected, called, incorporated into the body of the Risen Lord and sent as the sender, and can say: “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” After incorporation into his being, the individual is sent – not to tell that he has a large family, a lovely home, or lots of money, but that he has fulfilled scripture.

When Jesus entered the synagogue he began to teach, and those who heard him wondered how he had such learning, since they knew he was only the carpenter’s son. They knew his mother’s name was Mary, his brothers’ James, Jose, Simon, and Judas, as well as his sisters.

Here we see a large family, and a man with little or no learning teaching the scholars of the day. He tells them that he was sent – not to build a house or to tell others how to do it, but to fulfill scripture. Then, beginning with Moses and the law and all the prophets and the psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Not realizing that scripture was all about him, a normal man from a large family whose trade was that of a carpenter was called, incorporated into the Risen Man, and sent, knowing he was one with the one who sent him.

I can’t divorce myself from the being that incorporated me into his body. He sent me to tell you that if you believe my experiences, you will also do the works that I do. If not, you will not do them, for there is no other way to salvation. Unless these mystical experiences unfold in you, you will never leave this world of death to live in the world of life.

In Adam all die. In Jesus all are made alive. He made me alive, in him, and sent me to tell you of my experiences – for the need was great – and to say that if you believe me, you will experience them and be saved, as they are your departure from this world of death and your entrance into the world of life.

I tell you: in spite of the fact that I have an earthly father and mother, brothers, and a sister, I am no longer of this world. I am from above and you are from below. If you will believe me, you, too, will be born from above. Then you will no longer be from below, but will be an entirely different being, living in an entirely different world.

Now, in the 16th chapter of Acts, we read the story of a slave girl who possessed the spirit of divination and was making a lot of money for her owners as a soothsayer. And when Paul came by with his associates, she said: “These men are proclaiming the way of salvation,” and she followed them for many days. This story is followed by the imprisonment of Paul and a mighty earthquake, which awakened the jailer, who – trembling with fear – said: “What must I do to be saved?” And he was told to believe in the Lord Jesus.

To believe in a man? No. The Lord Jesus is only a pattern of salvation which is now encrusted with barnacles. I was called, incorporated into the body of love, and sent into the world to scrape off the barnacles by telling the path of salvation I have experienced.

In 1929 I did not volunteer, but was called. I stood in the presence of Infinite Love, who incorporated me into his body. I was sent as love – the body of the Risen Lord – back to a physical garment which is fragile, to tell those who are equally fragile that God is their own wonderful human imagination. Many, knowing my biological background, my large family with its limitations, reject my words. A few, however, have accepted them, and to that remnant it will happen.

So what must you do to be doing the work of God? Believe in him whom He has sent. I tell you He has sent me. You may or may not believe me, that is your privilege. But I tell you: the experience so changed me that I have walked by faith in this vision through the mire of doubt, even when it came from my intimate circle.

One is first called, incorporated into the body of love, and then sent. This goes on eternally until all are redeemed, for not one will be lost. Just as by Adam all die, so also by Christ shall all be made alive. This Christ is a pattern of the eternal purpose of God, for there is only one way to escape this world.

The pattern begins by your birth as spirit. This is followed by the discovery of the fatherhood of God. Your spiritual body will be torn from top to bottom as you ascend into heaven. And the symbol of the Holy Spirit will descend upon you to smother you with love, completing the pattern.

Jesus Christ is not a man, but a pattern, which I have come to renew. To believe that Jesus Christ existed is not a belief in him, for he is the way to salvation!

Now, once the ship is encrusted with barnacles, one is called and sent to scrape them off by retelling the story as something that happened to him. When I told my family, they could not believe me and questioned me, saying: “Neville, you mean you do not believe in Jesus Christ?” And I replied: “I believe in him far more than you do!” “Don’t you believe that he existed?’’ ‘‘Yes, but not as a man.”

To believe in Jesus Christ, you believe in the pattern of salvation of which he is. If you believe in a man, you believe in Neville, and Neville means nothing. If Neville was called and incorporated into the spiritual pattern of salvation, he is sent bearing the pattern which erupts within him. This pattern has erupted in me and I have told my story as I was sent to do.

It is said that Jesus began his ministry when he was about thirty years of age. That doesn’t mean thirty physical years, for he was not speaking as a biological man. Thirty years after he was incorporated into the body of love, he was qualified by the eruption to tell what had happened to him. He told his visions and pointed out their fulfillment of scripture, and some believed while others – so conditioned to believe in a physical Christ – could not understand.

The splitting of God’s temple is told in its symbolic manner in the 14th chapter of Zechariah, as: “The Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west as one half moves north and the other half moves south leaving a very wide valley.” It is told as a metaphor, but you are its reality. Scripture is all about you, and that splitting is yourself. Taken in a secular manner, David lived unnumbered years ago; but in the spirit, he will call you father.

When I share my visions and their scriptural confirmation, some believe me, but the majority think I am sharing a fantasy; yet I still walk with faith through the mire of doubt as I tell my story. My background is known. I have no education, no wealth or social position, yet I do know that I was chosen to be called and incorporated into the body of love and sent.

Love could have called a financial or intellectual giant, or someone handsome and wonderful, judged by human standards; yet he called me in the spirit. I was not initiated in the flesh, but was taken in spirit; for God is spirit, and those who worship him do so in spirit and in truth.

It was a spiritual incorporation into the body of love, yet it seemed to be solidly real. As Spirit, I returned to the garment I had left on the bed. It was that spiritual body which unfolded his plan of salvation. Now I know that this is the only way man can depart this world of death, and his departure begins by simply believing the story.

Don’t believe in Neville as a man, for he is frail and subject to all of the weaknesses of the flesh. Rather, believe in what I have experienced. I have unfolded scripture for you and shown you where my experiences were foretold. I have repeated this over and over in the hope that those who hear my words will believe them, for I have tied the gospel to its reality.

The Book of Acts, once part of the Book of Luke, was detached for a purpose. The story of Jesus, the pattern man, is not found in the Book of Acts. Rather, the story of the apostles is recorded there; for the apostles are sent to tell exactly how it happened in them. I do not know, however, of any part of scripture where the story is told as graphically as I have told it to you.

In the Old Testament, the question is asked: “Can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands pulling himself out of himself just like a woman in labor. Why does every face turn pale?” “To us a child is born; to us a son is given.”

When a woman forms a child within herself, is that child not part of her body? And when she is in labor, does she not pull a part of her body out of herself? Primitive women did not go to a hospital. While working in the field, these women would stop for a moment and pull that which they had formed within themselves, out of themselves. This is exactly what I did. I pulled myself right out of myself.

Five months later I fulfilled the 89th Psalm. When David stood before me, I knew I was his father, as there was no uncertainty as to this relationship. I am telling you what I have experienced. Scripture foretold these visions, which must take place before you can depart this world. What must you do to bring them about? Believe in the story I have been sent to tell; for if you do, and set your hope fully upon having these experiences, your salvation is assured. Eventually everyone will believe. Rejection delays the birth, however, for it comes only after acceptance of the story told by the one who was sent.

I did not choose to be sent. When I fell asleep that night, I would have been the last person I would have chosen as worthy to be called into the presence of the Risen Lord. The Beatitudes tell us that only the pure in heart will see God, and I certainly did not feel myself to be pure in heart. My wife and I were separated, and my little boy was moving back and forth between us. With the conflicts which go with all these silly little things, I would never have judged myself worthy of being pure in heart.

But God does not see what man sees. God sees the heart. He sees the motive behind the act, never the outer picture. Was the thought brought forth in love, or to get even? Was its motive to inflict pain, or to express love? God sees the heart, and when He judges it as pure, that individual is called.

In 1929 I was called, and for thirty years I only taught the law. The promise was there in scripture, but I did not know it until it erupted in me thirty years later. From that moment on I could do nothing but think about it, talk about it, and share my experiences of it; for that is what I was sent to do.

My genealogy is known. My biological background – my father, mother, brothers, and sister, as well as my lack of education – is known; yet it is all recorded in scripture. When I shared my experiences with my family, they rejected them one hundred percent! My earthly father came the closest to understanding. One day a minister was at the house, and when he could not answer my questions, or throw any light upon my visions, my father said: “Son, you must be an apostle.” My mother felt it in her womb when I was coming into this world; but she had no confirmation, as I became a dancer – and she had thought I would be a minister in the Anglican church.

But I tell you: this is the only way to salvation. Don’t believe in Neville. He is not the way. I could go out with you every night and thoroughly enjoy matching you drink for drink. No food is distasteful to me, as I enjoy it all.

I am told I am not discriminating enough, for I can find nothing to condemn. I do, however, admit to all of my weaknesses of the human flesh; yet in spite of that I was called and sent. At the time I did not know God’s purpose; but after his message erupted within me, I knew I was sent to refresh the atmosphere, and clean it up after centuries of misunderstanding of the Christian mystery.

Christianity fulfills the promise of Judaism. Fulfilling the pattern called Jesus, we are gathered one by one into that one resurrected man, to be that one being in Christ. I don’t care what name you bear on earth, you will be sent as Jesus. You will play his part and share your experiences with all who will listen. Do not elaborate; but tell them that unless they believe, it will not happen to them and they will remain in the world of death.

It is not enough to believe only that Christ existed. That is like saying to a friend: “I believe you exist.” What an insult! The question is: do you trust Christ? Do you believe in him? Now I – a man – tell you the story of salvation as I have experienced it. Do you believe in my story? If you do, you believe in me; then forget all you hear about me as a man.

A friend recently told an acquaintance the story of my experiences, then later mentioned that I had been divorced and had remarried. The moment the lady heard I was divorced, she closed her mind and could not accept the story that I was called, incorporated into the body of God, and sent to tell. She judged the outer man and could not believe in him whom God has sent. She could go across the street, however, and believe that if she only ate corn she would be saved, because the person who told her so wasn’t divorced.

I tell you: you can eat corn from now on, but you will still remain in this world of death until you believe salvation’s story as I have experienced it. I don’t care what you have done or are doing; if you believe my story and set your hope fully upon that grace which is coming to you, He who sees your belief will call you and erupt within you. God sees your heart. He sees that you are capable of believing the incredible story of Christ and fulfills it.

Ask the doctor who brought you out of your mother’s womb to explain how the bones grew there, or how they were covered with flesh; and – although he can give you reasons why they appeared – he cannot tell you how it is done; as we are told in the books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs: “Who knows how the bones grow in the womb of woman?

Now I tell you of another birth, which is greater than that which comes out of woman. No one sees this birth, yet it is real, for it is the birth of God. He is born out of this body of death and takes you with him into the body of life. It is not necessary to understand this birth, only to believe in it. So, what must you do to be doing the work of God? Believe in him whom he has sent. And what must you do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus, who is the pattern you have heard [about] from me. Then go about your business and live fully; enjoy life and all that it has to offer.

A lady recently called, who had heard me many years ago in Detroit and Minneapolis. Although she and her husband had nothing, she believed what I said and imagined having lots of money. Her husband spent many years in different mental hospitals, depleting the little money they had, and then one day he took his own life.

Her only brother was a very thrifty businessman, who lived frugally. He died, and three weeks later his wife died, leaving everything to this lady. Now she has the money to live in luxury, just as she had imagined. This lady assumed wealth without knowing where it would come from, and now she has it.

The law will not fail you here or in the world of God, for you must believe both stories. I tell you: an assumption, though false, if persisted in will prove itself in the world of Caesar, as it did in her case. I also tell you an incredible story: that you will awaken in your skull and experience a spiritual birth as described in scripture; for you are the one spoken of there.

Can you believe both stories? If you believe one enough to test it, and it proves itself in performance, try to believe the other; for unless you believe both, you cannot prove them. If you believe the one in the world of Caesar, you can have money as this lady has. But you must believe the other in order to live where you do not need money, for there you know that the earth is yours and all within it. When you are incorporated into the body of God, you know you are God and everything is yours. Then you will tell your story, depart this world, and return to the Father – who is yourself!

But while you are here, where you do not know the world is all yours, apply the law of assumption. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and let God’s law work for you. Learn to believe the story on this level through application, and one day you will believe the incredible story on the higher level.

What must we do to be doing the work of God? Believe in him whom he has sent. Though born of flesh and blood, with four brothers and sisters, and a carpenter by trade, after the second birth he was no longer the man one knew, but an entirely different being. After telling you what happened in him, he asks you to believe it. If you do, you believe in the way you are saved. If you do not, you believe in and will remain in the world of death with its many blows.

Hundreds of millions of people call themselves Christians and believe in the existence of Jesus; but they do not believe in him, for if they did they would believe his story. I have told it in my book, Resurrection. The story is true. I have come to bear witness to it. God incorporated me into his body and sent himself with me, so whoever sees me, sees him who sent me. You will never see the one who sent me by looking at the outer man. It is only the inner man who bears God’s likeness, for that is who I am!

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 10-06-1969

The objective reality of this world is solely produced by the human imagination, in which all things exist. Tonight I hope to show you how to subjectively appropriate that which already exists in you, and turn it into an objective fact. Your life is nothing more than the out picturing of your imaginal activity, for your imagination fulfills itself in what your life becomes. 

The last year that Robert Frost was with us, he was interviewed by Life Magazine and said: “Our founding fathers did not believe in the future, they believed it in.” This is true. Having broken with England, our founding fathers could have established their own royalty here by making one of them the king, thereby perpetuating a royal family. They could have chosen a form of dictatorship, but they agreed to imagine a form of government that had not been tried since the days of the Greeks. Democracy is the most difficult form of government in the world, yet our founding fathers agreed to believe it in. They knew it would take place, because they knew the power of belief – the power I hope to show you that you are, tonight.

To say: “I am going to be rich,” will not make it happen; you must believe riches in by claiming within yourself: “I am rich.” You must believe in the present tense, because the active, creative power that you are, is God. He is your awareness, and God alone acts and is. His name forever and ever is “I am” therefore, he can’t say: “I will be rich” or “I was rich” but “I am rich!” Claim what you want to be aware of here and now, and – although your reasonable mind denies it and your senses deny it – if you will assume it, with feeling, your inward activity, established and perpetuated, will objectify itself in the outside world – which is nothing more than your imaginal activity, objectified. To attempt to change the circumstances of your life before you change its imaginal activity, is to labor in vain. This I know from experience. I had a friend who hated Roosevelt, yet wanted him to change. Every morning while shaving, my friend would tell Roosevelt off. He found great joy and satisfaction in this daily routine, yet could not understand why Roosevelt stayed the same. But I tell you, if you want someone to change, you must change your imaginal activity, for it is the one and only cause of your life. And you can believe anything in if you will not accept the facts your senses dictate; for nothing is impossible to imagine, and imagining – persisted in and believed – will create its own reality.

Now, all things exist in God, and he exists in you and you exist in him. Your eternal body is the human imagination, and that is God Himself. Your imagination is an actual body in which everything is contained. When you imagine, the thing itself comes out of that divine body, Jehovah. The story of Jesus is a wonderful mystery that cannot be solved until you discover, from experience, that he is your own wonderful human imagination.

We are told that God speaks to man in a dream and unveils himself in a vision. Now, vision is a waking dream like this room, while a dream occurs when you are not fully awake. A few years ago this vision was mine: I was taken in spirit into one of the early mansions on 5th Avenue in New York City at the turn of the century. As I entered, I saw that three generations were present and I heard the eldest man telling the others of their grandfather’s secret. These are his words: “Grandfather used to say, while standing on an empty lot: `I remember when this was an empty lot.’ Then he would paint a word picture of what he wanted to build there. He saw it vividly in his mind’s eye as he spoke, and in time it was established. He went through life in that manner, objectively realizing what he had first subjectively claimed.”

I tell you: everything in your outer world was first subjectively appropriated, I don’t care what it is. Desire can be your empty lot where you may stand, remembering when that which you now have, was only a desire. If I now say: “I remember when I lectured at the Woman’s Club in Los Angeles” I am implying I am no longer there, and am where I want to be. Remembering when you were poor, I have taken you out of poverty and placed you in comfort. I remember when you were sick, by taking you out of sickness and placing you in the state of health. I remember when you were unknown, implies you are now known. By changing my memory image of you, I can now remember when you, with all your fame and fortune, were unknown and broke. That was the secret of grandfather’s success.

This is what I learned in vision. Do not put this thought aside because it came to me in vision. In the 12th chapter of the Book of Numbers it is said that God speaks to man through the medium of dreams and makes himself known through vision. If God makes himself known to you through vision, and speaks to you in dream, what is more important than to remember your dreams and visions? You can’t compare the morning’s paper or any book you may read, to your vision of the night, for that is an instruction from the depth of yourself.

God in you speaks to you in a dream, as he did to me when he took me on a trip in time to that beautifully staffed mansion at the turn of the century. As spirit, I was invisible to those present; but I heard more distinctly than they, and comprehended the words more graphically then they, because they had their millions; and who is going to tell one who already has millions how to get them. I entered their environment to hear their story, in order to share it with those who will hear and believe my words and then try it.

This doesn’t mean that, just because you heard my vision you are going to enjoy wealth; you must apply what you heard, and remember when. If you would say: “I remember when I couldn’t afford to spend $400 a month for rent,” you are implying you can well afford it now. The words: “I remember when it was a struggle to live on my monthly income,” implies you have transcended that limitation. You can put yourself into any state by remembering when. You can remember when your friend expressed her desire to be married. By remembering when she was single, you are persuading yourself that your friend is no longer in that state, as you have moved her from one state into another.

When I say all things exist in the human imagination, I mean infinite states; for everything possible for you to experience now, exists in you as a state of which you are its operant power. Only you can make a state become alive. You must enter a state and animate it in order for it to outpicture itself in your world. You may then go back to sleep and think the objective fact is more real than its subjective state into which you have entered; but may I tell you: all states exist in the imagination. When a state is entered subjectively, it becomes objective in your vegetative world, where it will wax and wane and disappear; but its eternal form will remain forever and can be reanimated and brought back into being through the seed of contemplative thought. So I tell you: the most creative thing in you is to enter a state, and believe it into being.

Now, causation is the assemblage of mental states, which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. Let us say that I have two friends who would empathize with me (not sympathize) if they heard my good news. I put them together and listen (all in my imagination) as they talk about me and what has happened in my life. Being true friends, I hear their words of joy and see their happiness reflected on their faces. Then I allow myself to become visible to them and feel their handshake and embrace as I accept their congratulations as a fact. Now I have assembled a mental state, which occurring, created that which the assemblage implied; therefore I am its cause. As I walk, firmly believing in the reality of what I have done, and that imaginal act becomes a fact, I may question myself as it how it came about. Then, remembering my imaginal act I would say: “I did it.” If I did it, then did not God do it? Yes, because God and I are one “I am”.
Are you going to continue to believe there is another on the outside; or are you going to believe the great confession of faith, which I would urge you to accept? It’s the great Sh’ma: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” If the Lord is one he can’t be two; therefore, if his name is I am and you say “1 am,” you must be one with the Lord who brought the world into being.

Listen to these words: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that things that are seen were made out of things which do not appear.” Here we see that the word of God is an imaginal activity, which -joined by faith – created the world. And faith is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of an objective hope. Now, when you discuss your desire with me, you cannot see my imaginal act relative to you. If you tell me you need a job and I accept that thought, when I think of you I remember your need. But if I changed your words and heard you tell me you loved your job, I could remember when you needed one; for now my memory bank contains the fact that you have a job you like very much. And when we meet again you tell me that you have it, you are only bringing confirmation of my imaginal, creative act.

Now, if imagination works this way, and it proves itself in the testing time and time again, what does it matter what the world thinks? It costs you nothing to try it, and what a change in life it will produce for you. Try it, for you will prove it in performance.

This may be in conflict with what you believe God to be. Maybe you still want him to be someone on the outside, so that there are two of you and not one. That’s all right if you do, but I tell you: God became you that there would not be you and God. He became you, that you may become God. If God became you, his name must be in you, and it is; for if I ask you anything, you must first be aware of the question before you can respond, and your awareness is God.

You may not be aware of who you are, where you are, or what you are; but you do know that you are. Aware of what your senses and reason dictate, you may believe that you are limited, unwanted, ignored, and mistreated; and your world confirms your belief in your imaginal activity. And if you do not know that your awareness is causing this mistreatment, you will blame everyone but yourself; yet I tell you the only cause of the phenomena of life is an imaginal activity. There is no other cause.

If you believe in the horrors of the world as they are given to you in the paper and on television, your belief causes the horrors to continue. Believing the news of a shortage, you will buy what you do not need, blindly accepting the pressure to perpetuate an imaginal activity that keeps you frightened. All through scripture you are told to let not your heart be troubled, be not afraid, and fear not. If fear could be eliminated, there would be no need for psychologists or psychiatrists. It’s a bunch of nonsense, anyway. Every day this branch of medicine changes their concepts and they are always in conflict as to what a man’s attitude towards life is.

I say to everyone: the whole vast world is now in your human imagination, and you can bring any desire out of it by believing it into being.

First, you must know what you want, then create an image that fulfills it. Would your friends know and talk about it? Imagine they are with you now, discussing your fulfilled desire. You could be at a cocktail or dinner party that is being given in your honor. Or maybe it’s a little get-together over tea. Create a scene in your mind’s eye and believe its reality in! That invisible state will produce the objective state you desire, for all objective reality is solely produced by imagination.

The clothes you are now wearing were first imagined. The chair in which you are seated, the room that surrounds you – there isn’t a thing here that wasn’t first imagined; so you can see that imagining creates reality. If you don’t believe it, you are lost in a world of confusion.

There is no fiction. What is fiction today will be a fact tomorrow. A book written as a fictional story today comes out of the imagination of the one who wrote it, and will become a fact in the tomorrows. If you have a good memory or a good research system, you could find today’s facts. Not every fact is recorded, because not every thought is written; yet every person imagines. A man, feeling wrongfully imprisoned and desiring to get even, will disturb the world, because all things by a law divine in one another’s being, mingle. You can’t stop the force that comes from one who is imagining, because behind the mask he wears, you and he are one. Start now to become aware of what you are thinking, for as you think, you imagine. Only then can you steer a true course to your definite end. If you lose sight of that end, however, you can and will be moved by seeming others. But if you keep your mind centered in the awareness of dwelling in your destination, you cannot fail.

The end of your journey is where your journey begins. When you tell me what you want, do not try to tell me the means necessary to get it, because neither you nor I know them. Just tell me what you want that I may hear you tell me that you have it. If you try to tell me how your desire is going to be fulfilled, I must first rub that thought out before I can replace it with what you want to be. Man insists on talking about his problems. He seems to enjoy recounting them and cannot believe that all he needs to do is state his desire clearly. If you believe that imagination creates reality, you will never allow yourself to dwell on your problems, for you will realize that as you do you perpetuate them all the more.

So I tell you: the greatest thing you can do is to believe a thing into existence, just as our founding fathers did. They had no current example of democracy. It existed in Greece centuries ago, but failed because the Greeks changed their imaginal activity. We could do that too. Don’t think for one second we have to continue as a democracy. We could be under dictatorship within twenty-four hours, for everything is possible. If you like democracy, you must be constantly watchful to keep its concepts alive within you. It’s the most difficult form of government. A man can voice an opinion and stage a protest here, but in other forms of government he cannot. If you want to enjoy the freedom of a democracy, you must keep it alive by being aware of it.

Now, if you keep this law, you don’t have to broadcast what you want; you simply assume that you have it, for – although your reasonable mind and outer senses deny it – if you persist in your assumption your desire will become your reality. There is no limit to your power of belief, and all things are possible to him who believes. Just imagine what an enormous power that is. You don’t have to be nice, good, or wise, for anything is possible to you when you believe that what you are imagining is true. That is the way to success.

I believe any man who has been successful in his life’s venture has lived as though he were successful. Living in that state, he can name those who aided him in achieving his success; and he may deny that he was always aware of success, but his awareness compelled the aid he received.

To believe your desire into being is to exercise the wonderful creative power that you are. We are told in the very first Psalm: “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord. In all that he does, he prospers.” This law, as explained in the Sermon on the Mount, is psychological. “You have heard it said of old, thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you, anyone who lusts after a woman has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart.” Here we discover that it is not enough to restrain the impulse on the outside. Adultery is committed the moment the desire is thought!

Knowing what you want, gear yourself towards it, for the act was committed in the wanting. Faith must now be added, for without faith it is impossible to please God. Can you imagine a state and feel that your imaginal act is now a fact? It costs you nothing to imagine; in fact you are imagining every moment in time, but not consciously. But, may I tell you: if you use your creative power by imagining a desire is already fulfilled, when you get it, the circumstances will seem so natural that it will be easy to deny your imagination had anything to do with it, and you could easily believe that it would have happened anyway. But if you do, you will have returned to sleep once again.

First of all, most of us do not even realize our own harvest when it confronts us. And if we do remember that we once imagined it, reason will tell us it would have happened anyway. Reason will remind you that you met a man (seemingly by accident) at a cocktail party who was interested in making money. When he heard your idea, he sent you to see his friend, and look what happened – so really, it would have happened anyway. Then, of course, it is easy to ignore the law, but “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord. In all that he does he prospers.”

Don’t forget the law while you are living in the world of Caesar, and apply it wisely; but remember you are not justified by its use. Justification comes through faith. You must have faith in the incredible story that God promised to bring himself out of you, as you! This is God’s promise to all, and all are asked to believe it.

It is not what you are, but what you trust God to do, that saves you. And to the degree that you trust God to save you, you will be saved. But he has given us a psychological law to cushion the inevitable blows of life. The law is simple: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” It is the law of like begets like. As you imagine, so shall your life become. Knowing what you want, assume the feeling that would be yours if you had it. Persist in that feeling, and in a way you do not know and could not devise, your desire will become a fact. Grandfather made his fortune by standing on an empty lot and saying to himself: “I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then he would paint a beautiful word picture of the structure he desired there. This is a wonderful technique. You can remember when you were unknown, penniless, and ill, or a failure. Remembering when you were, implies you are no longer that, and your power is in its implication.

Use the law and it will take you from success to success, as you conceive success to be. As far as I am concerned, success is to fulfill the promise, and you cannot do that through the law. The promise is fulfilled through faith. Are you holding true to the faith? Examine yourself to see if you are. I have told you an eternal story. Believe it, but do not change it. The story is this: God became you that you may become God. Use the law to cushion the blows while God keeps his promise; and then one day, when your journey is over, you will say: “Into thy hands I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” That’s the cry on the cross. Commit your spirit to your imaginal act, relax and fall asleep knowing its redemption is assured. Then when you least expect it, God will prove to you that he has redeemed you by awakening in you, as you. Then you will be born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 09-26-1969

“All are Men in Eternity. Rivers, Mountains, Cities, Villages, 

All are Human, and when You enter into Their Bosoms,
You walk In Heavens and Earths;
Just as in Your own Bosom You bear Your Heaven And Earth,
and all that You behold, though it appears Without, it is Within,
In Your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow.” 

(William Blake’s Jerusalem, Plate 71:17)

You may ask yourself what Blake is talking about, yet this is the language of the Bible. Biblical language evokes rather than describes. It is telling of another world, another Man and another age; for in truth, all of the places in the Bible are human.

In the Book of Revelation, John sees Jerusalem become a woman, descending out of heaven adorned like a bride for her husband. And in the 5th chapter of Micah we are told that Bethlehem is that woman out of which God comes. Listen to the words carefully: “You, O Bethlehem, are so little to be among the thousands of Judah, yet from you will come forth for me, one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient times. Therefore, he will give them up until that time when she who is in travail has brought forth.” Then we read in the 63rd [Chapter] of Isaiah, “O Lord, thou art our Father, our Redeemer from of old is thy name.” Here we see the Ancient of Days as our Father and Redeemer and, like Bethlehem, we are all in travail, redeeming everything and bringing forth the Father of all life as our very self!

One day you will know an imaginative world where the mountains, rivers, cities, and villages are human. Everything will be possible to you there, for when your imaginative faculties awaken, every thought is objectively real. I don’t care what it is, your every imaginal act will instantly become an objective fact. This we are told throughout the Old Testament, but its language evokes and man finds it difficult to understand.

In the 14th chapter of Jeremiah you will find these words: “Thou, Lord are in the midst of us. We are called by thy name; leave us not.” The Lord’s name is “I am.” How could anyone exist and have the name “I am” taken from him? If you couldn’t say “I am” you would cease to be. You could suffer from total amnesia and not know where you are, who you are, or what you are; but, because God remains faithful to his pledge, you can’t stop knowing that you are. And that which is buried in your soul must come forward, and when it does, you are God.

You don’t boldly claim, “I am God” without any assurance that you are. That would be silly. To walk the streets proclaiming, “I am God,” not having had his plan of salvation unfold within you, would be the height of insanity. But when he reveals himself in you, you don’t proclaim it to anyone, you simply know it and live by this knowledge. And the only way he will ever reveal himself in you, as you, is to have his son stand before you and call you “Father.” Then, having fulfilled the 89th Psalm, you too will say: “I have found David. He said unto me: ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my Salvation.'” When this lad stands before you, you know exactly who he is and who you are, for this relationship was established before that the world was.

Knowing you are the Eternal God who is Father, you will share this fantastic knowledge, not expecting a hundred percent acceptance, but allowing everyone to respond to what you say. Seeing your weaknesses and limitations, some will believe you and some will disbelieve. Don’t let it matter to you, simply tell it and go your way until the end of your allotted time. Then, with the discarding of your garment of flesh and blood, your weaknesses are removed and you awaken as God. Those who heard and accepted your experiences will prove your words in the not distant future and they, too, will awaken as the Ancient of Days.

Mortal eyes cannot see the being I really am. I know I am the Ancient of Days. I never began and I will never end. I appear to have begun in time. That is because I buried myself in my creation, in time. I am the Melchizedek of scripture – he who has no father, no mother, no genealogy, no beginning of days, or ending of days. I am eternity, buried in and waking in my creation. And because I am the Father of all life, my son, David – the personification of everything I have given life to, through experience – will stand before me to witness my fatherhood. David’s father was called Jesse, which means “I am.” It is that father who, recognizing David, says: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”

This experience will be yours when you come out of the fiery furnaces, which each one of us must and will go through. Did the Lord not tell us: “I have tried you in the furnace of affliction (experiences) for my sake; for my own sake I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” There is only God, so he cannot give his glory to another. Having buried himself in his creation, when he rises from his burial place, he is still God, but enhanced beyond measure by reason of becoming his own creation and rising in it, individualized. We are all members of a body which shares in this grand play of rivers, mountains, cities, hills, and villages – all of which are humanity, all men in eternity.

Have you ever reclined in a chair with your eyes closed as in sleep and pictured a stream of water so real you could put your mental hands in it and they are wet? When you cupped your hands and brought them to your mouth, could you feel the water going down your throat? If you have, you know that the state you have entered is very real and personal. That is the power which is in store for you. That is your power tomorrow, when everything will be at your disposal, all based upon your own wonderful human imagination, for that is God.

Taking upon himself all the weaknesses and limitations of the flesh, God became as you are, that you may become as he is. And when he awakens within you, you are he. If you will believe in your own wonderful, imaginative world, everything will be under your control – but everything! And you will know that everyone in your world is within you, to be contacted at will. That no one can escape you; and when you rise within yourself, everyone rises with you. That is the story of scripture.

While you are here you can test your creative power based upon your desires. You may desire something you think you cannot afford, or you don’t have the time or the know-how to enjoy it. You can think of a thousand reasons why its possession is impossible; but – hearing that imagination creates reality – you can imagine you have it. But to imagine is not enough; you must have faith enough in your imaginal act to believe in its reality. When you imagine you are the person you want to be, you must firmly believe you already are it; then wait in faith for your assumption to appear in your world, for that imaginal act has its own appointed hour. It will ripen and flower. If it seems long to you – wait, for it is sure and will not be late.

The link between your imaginal act and its fulfillment is your faith, which is nothing more than your subjective appropriation of your objective hope. Hoping your desire – subjectively appropriated – is true, faith is your link to its objectivity. Act as God, and simply let it be so. God said: “Let there be light, Let the sun appear. Let the moon appear.” After his imaginal act, God let everything appear, sustaining it by faith, knowing that without faith it is impossible to bring it to pass. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” If you have faith in the reality of your imaginal act, it must objectify itself in your world.

Now, in order to really understand scripture, you must have some knowledge of the experiences recorded there, because they are not of this world. The Bible speaks of the New Man who is in you. It is that Man of Spirit that I am appealing to, as he can believe in the reality of an imaginal act. The outer you knows a reality which it can touch, see, and hear. Its belief is based upon the evidence of its five senses and reason. But I am appealing to the Christ in you, who is your own wonderful human imagination, and one with the Lord. This magnificent creative power is buried in you and will rise in you – not as another, but as your very self. This will be done when the wall of perdition, which divides the two of you, is broken down. If I speak of him I am implying the existence of two; but when I say, “I am,” I am speaking of only one. So Christ becomes one with me by becoming my very self. But I will not know that I am he until I have experienced everything scripture tells me only happened to him.

My rebirth is the result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, for it is said that he rose from the same grave in which he was buried. Since there is only one skull, only one grave, and I awoke within my skull to discover I am alone, am I not the one who lay down there to sleep? If asked who was having this experience, I would answer, “I am,” and “I am” is not two – “I am” is one. I awoke in Golgotha – my own skull – and I came forth from that skull, as it is said that Bethlehem will bring forth someone for me, one who will rule as God.

Try ruling as God! Knowing that all things are possible to your imagination, imagine something that your reason and senses deny, and see if it works. If it does, then did you not rule your world as God? That’s how God acts. He imagines and lets it appear. And who is he? The Ancient of Days.

In the Book of Daniel, you are told: “There came one, like a son of man, who was presented to the Ancient of Days and they became one.” The word translated “son of man” is the Aramaic for the word “I” or “one.” That’s all it means. So when Jesus uses the word, “son of man” he is designating his function as the mediator between the world of man and the kingdom of God. In the Book of John he says: “O Holy Father, I have made known unto them thy name, the name thou gavest me.” Here he tells you the name is “Father,” saying, “Holy Father.” Now he wants something else. “May the love with which thou hast loved me be in them and I in them,” for the Holy Father wears the body of love.

When you step into the presence of the Ancient of Days, you see God in the human form divine, which is infinite love. And when he incorporates you into himself through an embrace, you fuse with love, thereby becoming the Ancient of Days. You know this because you feel it, but love cannot be seen with mortal eyes; and when you tell your story, those who hear you will say: “You? Why you are not yet fifty.” In the speaker’s case they would say: “You are not yet seventy, yet you know Abraham?” And I would answer, “Before Abraham, was I am.” They would then pick up stones to stone me with the facts of life.

Your birth certificate, place of birth, your social, intellectual, and financial backgrounds, are all cataloged, all available as stones to be thrown when you dare to claim that you are known by one who – as a forefather – lived unnumbered centuries ago. One who not only rejoiced to see your day, but saw it and was glad. To claim that you not only know him, but came before him, does not make sense, but is true. That which has no origin, buried itself in that which began in time, in order to raise that which began in time to its own level – which has no origin.

Here we find the story of Nebuchadnezzar and Melchizedek all rolled up into one. Nebuchadnezzar was an insane king – just like Man in this world. And Melchizedek, who has no father or mother, no origin, no beginning or ending in time, is buried within Nebuchadnezzar. Rising in that which began in time, he transforms time into eternity. Here again we have the story of the coming of the Father.

To find the Father of all life is all that is worthwhile. What else is worth finding? To find a million dollars would be wonderful for the moment, but one day the money will be gone, for everything dies here. Even the very heavens are dissolving; but your imagination cannot dissolve, for he is the Father who was before that the world was. So when imagination rises in you, you are God, even though you are still in a garment which wears out. And when the world calls you dead, it is because you have returned to the Father, as the Father.

As imagination rises in you, you understand the words: “I came out from the Father and I have come into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.” Now the same “I” makes this statement: “Go to my brothers.” If we are all brothers, we do not differ from this one “I” in whom the whole thing took place. The gospel is only the record of experiences seen and heard in the soul. So, “Go and tell my brothers I am ascending unto my Father and their Father, to my God and their God.” There is no other Father but the one Father, and no other God but the one God, who is in us all as our own wonderful human imagination. When you say, “I am,” that’s he, and there is no other God.

You will not know you are God, however, until scripture becomes alive and fulfills itself in you. For that purpose and that purpose only did you come into the world. You did not come here to put things right, as the priesthoods would say. This world is a schoolroom, where man is searching for his father; and how long, vast, and severe the anguish before he finds his father, is long to tell. I do not know when God will awaken within you; but I do know that he will, and then you will see the reason behind it all. So leave the world just as it is and make no attempt to change it.

Every day politicians are trying to change the world. We have many who claim to be our saviors, yet each – like the Hitlers and the Stalins of the world – have clay feet. Still, people will believe in them and you can’t stop them, because they are dreaming. Being all imagination, you can’t stop man from imagining, and imagining creates reality. Tonight they are trying to stop cigarette smoking. They tried to stop alcohol back in 1919, and in their doing, those who lived in the gutter became billionaires, making billions that they could not – and did not – declare for taxes. Al Capone made 130 million dollars net a year for fourteen years without paying taxes. They got him for a few thousand on some small infraction – but what happened to the 130 million a year? So, the do-gooders will do it all over again. Now they are going to start banning cigarettes; and instead of receiving six billion dollars in taxes from the industry, the money will go into the hands of those who will see to it that those who want cigarettes get them.

Man never learns his lesson. I can remember prohibition well. I came to New York City in 1922 and remained there until 1952, so I know New York City well. Old man Rockefeller, the one who really made the fortune, owned about six blocks between 5th and 6th Avenue. His entire family occupied one block on 54th Street. Before Radio City was built, he owned and rented out the two- and three-story buildings there. One day his son said: “Do you realize that all of those buildings are speakeasies?” Here was a Baptist – who gave millions for the dry campaign – renting houses to be used as speakeasies. So you see, you can blind yourself to anything.

I tell you: prohibition is stupid. You can educate a man out of a state, but you cannot prohibit him from occupying it. If I told you I would give you the earth if you would not think of a monkey for the next 24 hours, I would keep my earth, for you could not do it. Every commandment that is negative will be broken, for “God has consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.” The moment I give you a command that is negatively worthy, I have consigned you to disobedience. There is only one commandment which is not negative. That one is “Love thy father and mother.” Every commandment has to be broken, yet man thinks he is so holy.

A man who recently celebrated his 100th birthday was asked what he thought contributed to his longevity, and he answered, “Smoking! I have been smoking every day of my life since I was eight years old.” Another lady, dying of throat cancer at the age of 30, told reporters that she had never smoked a cigarette in her life. My mother never smoked or drank, yet she died a very painful death at the age of 62. My father drank like a fish. He broke every health code. He never read anything concerning what he should eat in order to live, he just lived. He ate what he wanted when he wanted it. He drank what he wanted when he wanted it, and died at 85 from sheer exhaustion. Having these two examples before me, I don’t believe in this nonsense relative to what I should eat and drink. I will wear out this body just as I have a suit of clothes, and when I do, men will call me dead; but I will not be dead, I will be one with the Awakened Christ, for I have experienced scripture. David, in the Spirit, called me Father, so now I know my name and will return to that awareness.

Remember, the Bible evokes, it does not describe. There are three kinds of writing: journalism, literature, and scripture. You can study journalism or literature, but not scripture; for it is all revelation, all vision – written to evoke, not describe. As the visions possess you, you will discover that everything in scripture becomes man. The rivers, mountains, cities, villages – all are man.

In the 4th chapter of his book, Daniel shared his vision, saying: “I saw a watcher, a holy one come down from above and heard him say, ‘Cut down the tree, cut off its branches, strip its leaves, scatter its fruit, but leave the stump bound in iron and bronze.'” Now the tree becomes a person. “`Water him with the dew of heaven. Take from him the mind of man and let his habitation be among the beasts until seven times pass over him and he learns that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, even to the lowliest among men.’ “The tree spoken of here is the tree of life, which grows in the human brain. It has been cut down to the root; but out of that tree of life (called Jesse) will come a shoot, which is what the Father is waiting for. He is waiting for himself to come out of man, individualized as the man he is bringing with him.

So God – he who created the world and all within it – descended into his creation. And when he rises, in all, he wipes away time and space as we know it, and becomes the only reality.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 03-26-1963

When you are discussing Blake you are discussing one of the greatest spiritual giants of all time. You might just as well discuss St. Paul, for they had the identical visions, the vision of reality. Tonight we can cover only a portion of his gift to the world. In his “Auguries of Innocence” he says:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

What is the sequence? The most inanimate thing in the world, a grain [of] sand, and in it to see a world. Then he moves to the first animation, a flower; and then to see harmony, which is Heaven – to see a “Heaven in a Wild Flower.” And now he comes to space: “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.” And then to time: “And Eternity in an hour.”

He moves on now to the bird world, to show us the relationship of the whole vast world, the unity of the world, that we are all actively related. That you can’t disturb anything at this moment in any way and not actually affect the whole.

“A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.”

We think we can catch the little bird and cage it for our amusement, that which should be set free. He said:

“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
(“Marriage of Heaven and Hell”)

So, the little

“Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.”

Then he moves on to the next state, in what the world would call evolution, but he doesn’t call it that. Now into another aspect of the animal world:

“A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.”
(“Auguries of Innocence”)

And he takes the stages right through. You will read it as you go along. (“Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris” in his Pickering MS.) Here is this mental giant who saw the complete relationship of all of us. So I think I could be isolated were I in a dungeon and I thought of you – my thought is affecting the entire universe. I thought of you with envy, or with hate, or with love, whatever the thought was as I conjured you in my mind’s eye and represented to myself as I want you to be, whether it is in hate or in love, I am affecting the whole vast world. And if I believe in the reality of what I have done, it will come to pass. And because we are all one, all interwoven, I will use you without your consent, your knowledge, to fulfill that which I have imagined at that moment.

Then he makes this statement:

“What seems to Be, Is, To those to whom
It seems to Be, and is productive of the most dreadful
Consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of
Torments, Despair, Eternal Death; but the Divine Mercy
Steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body of Jesus.”
(“Jerusalem,” Plate 36)

He steps beyond. Because of this principle man could be lost forever, not knowing what he is doing, but “Divine Mercy Steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body of Jesus.” “God is Jesus” and we are but members in this divine body, therefore, only one name – we are he. So Blake made this statement: “Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in him.” (“Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris”)

“The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is, God himself,
The Divine Body, Jesus; we are his Members.”
(“The Laocoön”)

He makes every world, and now he asks us to join with him in putting this to the test. When you read his works from beginning to end, he never waivers from this premise. One thing he asks us all to do and to always bear in mind at every moment in time – to distinguish between the immortal man, which he saw… He said: “When I first did distinguish the immortal man that cannot die. . . that immortal man was Imagination.” Imagination has a body and he describes that body when he begs us to always discriminate between this immortal man — your wonderful human Imagination —and the state into which it has fallen.

And so, you may be this night in the state of love (I hope you are), the state of tenderness, the state of affluence. I don’t know, but you may not be. You may be in the opposite state. But were you in the opposite state, or some friend of yours, or some total stranger in the opposite state, he begs you, he begs all of us, to always bear in mind the distinction between the occupant of the state and the state, and lift everyone out of the state if it is an unlovely
state. For man is like a pilgrim passing through states, as though I pass through the states of this country. If this night I pass through Chicago, Chicago remains, but I — the pilgrim — pass on. If I pass through any state — the state of poverty, when I leave poverty it doesn’t really dissolve, it hasn’t disappeared. I left it for anyone to enter. I hope they will avoid it, but anyone may fall into it or deliberately go into it by feeling sorry for himself, feeling unwanted. And so he tells us of these enormous states, infinite states in the world. That everything possible that could happen to man is already created in the form of states. When man enters the state, the state unfolds because he — the operant power — has entered the state, and unknowingly he simply unfolds the state. If the state is one of wealth, in a way he does not know everyone in the world that can aid the unfolding of that state must aid it. If he enters any state — the state of poverty — though at the moment when he enters it he may have everything in the world, in no time he will grow the fruits of poverty in this world, for he is in the state of poverty. But he, the occupant of the state, is neither rich or poor.

So, Blake calls upon everyone to bear this in mind constantly and forgive every being in the world. For he says: “Mutual forgiveness of each sin, such are the Gates into Heaven in our world.” If I could only remember every moment of time when I see someone I dislike, that he is only in a state. That is why I dislike him – I dislike the state. I identify him with the state I dislike, but I think it is the occupant. It is not the occupant. He could come out at any moment in time, or I could get him out if I pulled him out and put him into another state, and I wouldn’t dislike him. If I bear this in mind, knowing my power to pull him out of the state I could save him, at least temporarily, until he is actually redeemed by this “Divine Mercy that steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body of Jesus.” And that is a true vision. We are “Redeemed in the Body of Jesus.” The day will come when you actually will be pulled into his presence, for it is he, divine mercy, that steps beyond, in spite of what we have done, and pulls us right into his presence.

Then we are asked a very simple question. The world will answer correctly or he would not have told us. It is automatically done — we are divinely prompted what to answer, what to say when the question is asked. We cannot make a mistake, for we are actually prompted from the depths of our soul and we answer. At that very moment he embraces us and we become one with him – Jesus. We are fused into the body of Jesus.

And you say: “Is Jesus a man?” Yes, he is a man. So Blake makes the statement:

“If Thou Humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me;
Thou also dwell’st in Eternity.
Thou art a Man, God is no more,
Thy own Humanity learn to adore.”
(“Everlasting Gospel”)

So when you stand in his presence you are standing in the presence of Man and it is Infinite Man. It is Jesus, and you are actually saved in the body of Jesus, because he embraces you and you are locked in his body, one with his body. You are the body. You aren’t locked in the sense that you disappear — you are that being. You become one with Jesus, yet you do not lose your identity. No loss of identity and yet one with God, for God is Jesus. Now this is Blake’s teaching and I have proven much of it to my own satisfaction by my own mystical experiences.

Now he comes to discuss the story of the “Virginity of the Virgin.” For are we not told in Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The word Immanuel means “God is with us.” Listen to it carefully: “She will conceive and bear a son, and call his name Immanuel.” The child will be given the name as a token. The child is not the great event; the child will be given a name and is the token of deliverance. The child himself is not the deliverer. The child is simply the sign of an event taking place. Now Blake writes one single little verse and he speaks of it as the “Virginity of the Virgin.” You are the virgin, whether you be male or female, I am the virgin, we are all the virgin. I didn’t know what was happening to me any more than you will know what is happening to you. He puts it in four little lines:

“Whate’er is done to her she cannot know,
And if you’ll ask her she will swear it so.
Whether ‘tis good or evil none’s to blame:
No one can take the pride, no one the shame.”
(“Poems from the Note-book”)
[On the virginity of the Virgin Mary and Johanna Southcott]

So we said in the story: “How can this thing be, seeing that I know not a man?” And through the centuries thousands of columns have been written condemning the act, for it was out of wedlock and they take it on this level. It is not on this level. You are the bride of God, as told us in Isaiah 54:5: “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” So the one who made me is going to sire me, without my knowledge, without my consent. So

“Whate’er is done to me I cannot know,
And if you’ll ask me I will swear it so
Whether it is good or evil, none’s to blame:
No one can take the pride, no one the shame.”

No one can take the pride when I confess openly I gave birth to a child out of wedlock. For no one sired that child and no one can claim he sired it. Now whether it was a shameful thing to perform — well, the world must judge. Whether it be good or evil, well, who knows? But one thing I know: no one can claim they did it, therefore “No one can take the pride, no one the shame” — if it’s shame. So the prophecy was made and he writes in four little lines the story of the “Virginity of the Virgin.”

He is telling every being in the world that they are that virgin. And you will be sired by the Holy Spirit, and you will produce in visible form an infant, just as told us in the Gospel. Having produced it you stand amazed because how could you produce it in such an unnatural way? It doesn’t happen in a natural way. Therefore, you were the virgin who conceived unknowingly, for she said: “How can I conceive, how can I have a child seeing I know not a man?” Then you are told the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the child will be the child of God. But it will only symbolize an event that is taking place, and you will be the son of God. In that act you were the child, who symbolized your acceptance. But the son of God is also God the son, and the son of God is made to say: “I and my Father are one.”

Blake saw the whole vision so perfectly, so clearly, and told us in his fabulous works. Said he of the Bible: “I know of no other Christianity and no other Gospel than the liberty both of mind and body to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. Imagination the real and eternal world into which we shall all go after the death of this vegetable mortal body.” He would accept no other form of Christianity. And he said: “All ritual, all creeds,” everything in the form of a ritual “was anti-Christ.” No religion means by definition a time, devotion to the most exalted reality that one has experienced. But religion as practiced is simply artifice, creed, ceremony, confession, and all outward show, and Blake would have none of it. The whole thing to him was anti-Christian, because to him the whole thing was from within, something the individual experienced that no one by argument could shake.

Years later, another brilliant mind, William James, made this observation and wrote it in a letter (not in a book) to his son. The son allowed it to be published in 1920 in The Atlantic Monthly. In this letter, James said: “The mother seed, the fountain-head of religion, begins in the mystical experience of the individual. All theology, all ecclestiastism, are secondary growth, superimposed. These experiences belong to a region that is deeper, wiser and more practical than that which the intellect inhabits. For this they are indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticism.” Blake would have endorsed that one hundred per cent.

You couldn’t disturb him. They called him a mad person. Even to this very day they speak of him as one who was unbalanced. He confessed in one of his letters that William Cowper [came to him. Cowper was] one of the great poets and himself considered one of the six greatest of all writers of letters in the English tongue. He was a contemporary. He died in 1800, Blake in 1827. He was much older than Blake, and Blake in his letter did not say whether Cowper came to him while he walked this earth or after he made his exit from this earth, because Blake could not conceive of death in any sense of the word — nothing died, all things survived. He said: “Cowper came to me and said to me: ‘Would that I were mad always, I cannot rest. Would you not make me truly mad?’ Then he said: ‘Look at you, you are healthy, and yet you are more mad than all of us. Would that I were as mad. I cannot rest until I am as mad as you are.’” He claimed that was what Cowper said to him. That he would now be a “refugee from unbelief.”

We think we are sane when we believe in the evidences of the senses, when we believe in some mathematical state that proves itself in performance. He spoke of Blake as one who was a “real refugee from unbelief.” I tell you a fantastic story and you don’t believe it. Would that you would believe! Believe it, though reason would deny it and your senses deny it. Just to believe it and become a refugee from unbelief, because true religion cannot be analyzed. You can’t rationalize it; it is based upon these mystical experiences in the depths of the soul.

Blake said of the Bible: “The entire Hebrew Bible” . . . he did not mention a few of the works. He didn’t mention Ruth, Nehemiah, and things of that sort, but he said: “The Five books of the Decalogue; the books of Joshua and Judges, Samuel , a double book, and Kings , a double book, the Psalms and Prophets, The Four-fold Gospel, and the Revelations everlasting.” (“Jerusalem,” Plate 48) He did not name the prophets, which he called the latter prophets (also the major): Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. He said these are true vision. He did not mention the Epistles, but he said the four Gospels, Revelation, and the Hebrew Bible are eternal visions of what really exists. He saw it so clearly, that all these characters are personifications of eternal states and communed with these states, for when you commune with them they seem as real as you are. But they are personifications of God’s infinite mind; every aspect of his mind is personified. You are not an aspect of the mind, something entirely different. You are one with God. “Man is All Imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in him.” (“Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris”)

“The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself; The Divine Body Jesus; we are his Members” — part of the body of Jesus, and because there is only one name, we are he. So we pass through a process, a simple process which you can’t evoke, you can’t hasten it. But when you least expect it, divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man right into the body of Jesus. Then he passes through these stages, where he is born from above, where suddenly he beholds the divine Son [David] as his son; then the great woven structure of the body, the temple, is torn from top to bottom and he ascends to be one around this infinite throne of Jesus, who is God.

I actually believe it. I can’t prove it to you and I can’t take you with me into that moment of time where I experienced it. I can only tell you I have experienced it and ask you to believe it and share with me in belief, that you yourself may become a refugee from unbelief. For the man who cannot leave what he can touch with his hands and rationalize, cannot believe. And this is something you are called upon, although you have not seen it. “Blessed is the man who has not seen and still believes.” That is how the Gospel of John 20:29 ends. Those who heard about it, who would eventually experience it, like Job (42:5) — he said: “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees thee.” He heard about it and then came the experience, and he saw exactly what Blake is talking about, because Blake saw it.

I ask you to believe with me and take his works. I wouldn’t attempt to interpret for you. I have so many commentaries of Blake and they cost much more than all of Blake’s works put together, any one of them. You can buy Blake for $5.00, all this including his letters. I have invested in Blake’s works at home close to a thousand dollars in commentaries, and no two agree as to what Blake means by his fantastic experiences. But I bought all these commentaries of Blake before I had the experience. I could have saved a thousand dollars. I don’t regret it. I have them at home and there they stand in my library. Three volumes I paid $100.00 for, published by a dealer just back from England. These are rare volumes. Others he made me pay $55.00 and $65.00 for single volumes. And I have the whole of Blake in a nonesuch volume.

So you read him and all of a sudden you see exactly what he is trying to tell you, because you had a similar experience. Then comes the unfolding of the flower within you, the tree, and you have the experience, the same thing because all will have the identical experience, colored a little bit differently because we are all unique in God’s eye. So we have the same experience as we unfold on this great tree of life. Just think of it. If I can tell you what I would feel from Blake. Someone said: “He was the last civilized man.” Well, I hope not, but that is what was said of him. Blake had no venom in him, no impulse to hurt. He didn’t have to restrain the impulse; being all virtuous he acted from impulse and not from rules. He was simply a virtuous man in the sense that he loved people.

If I would take a summary of Blake and tell you what I get out of it, I would say tell your children while they are little tots and teach them: never unnecessarily hurt a creature or desecrate a flower. That is the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom. If you couldn’t hurt a flower, you couldn’t desecrate it. You see little children — not knowing what they are doing but in the presence of adults who should know better — and they will take a lovely rose and tear it and desecrate it. If the parent at that moment (or the adult, whether he is the parent or not) would stop the child and explain not at any time to unnecessarily hurt a creature, take the wings from a butterfly. I did it myself. To take the wings from a fly, to take the wings from something else. No reason for it, but I did it as a child. But I did it when possibly there was no one around like my father or mother to stop me in the act. But I know today from experience: you can take a child in its youth, in its infancy, teach it never unnecessarily to hurt a creature or desecrate a flower. That would be to it the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom.

Take George Washington Carver, who would take a flower in his hands and talk to it. The man couldn’t hurt it, he was incapable of hurt. He would talk to a sick flower and ask the flower what was wrong with it and try to tell him, that he in turn may bring in the solution to that rose bush — which he did. And he gave us, because he couldn’t hurt, this synthetic world of ours. He took the ordinary little peanut. He talked to the peanut and wondered “What are you for why did God make you? He made you for a purpose.” And then the peanut communed with George Washington Carver. And today we have 300 by-products from the peanut and hundreds of by-products from the southern pines, and from other things. I heard that gentleman the year he died. Just before he died he spoke in New York City at the forum held every year by the Herald Tribune, always held at the old Waldorf Astoria. He said (and I heard him, I saw him) that: “This concern about tomorrow’s not being able to feed the world. From the southern states of this country, forget the northern states, the southern states, we could feed the entire world, and clothe the entire world from the by-products. What we could extract from the southern pine and the peanut and all things, the synthetic world.” (He called it “the synthetic world.”)

Today you can go into a store and they brag about the synthetic garments. They call it Dacron or some other name and tell you how much better it is than the so-called natural thing that you would normally wear. All these are synthetic garments and they claim they are better in feeling, lasting wear, and everything else. All that goes back to a man who couldn’t hurt. And he was born a slave (I think he was sold for a horse or something). So we have to redeem him. Here was a man born into slavery who couldn’t hurt, and he is one of the mental, spiritual giants of the world. If you met him beyond the grave you would see a glorious being like a Blake, because he couldn’t hurt.

So I would say to everyone here who is in contact with tomorrow’s children: start it. If you start and tell the children never hurt unnecessarily. By that I mean if a horse breaks its foot then you have to destroy it. You can’t mend it and the merciful thing to do would be to blow its brains out. That would be a merciful act, but then you would do it not unnecessarily. Blake said:

“A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.”

To take this wonderful thing and cage it for your own amusement when it should cut the airy way. And then he says:

“A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.”

You wouldn’t think a cherub, one with the seraphim around the throne of God, would — at that very moment when we wound the skylark in its wing — would be silent. But in the inter-related world, all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. So you could not wound a skylark in the wing and expect a cherubim to continue to sing. All of a sudden things come to an end by our misuse of this fantastic power that is ours. For being all imagination, as we misuse the power that is imagination we cause cherubim to become silent. We cause the whole of heaven to cry out when we cage something that should be set loose and free in this world.

But you start, and I am quite sure it wouldn’t take more than one generation, if the world would believe it, if you start it in the home with children. Take them into the garden and let them see and then watch their reactions. Some may be more violent and tear it off, but stop them right there. Don’t hit them, just stop them and explain to them that it is a creation of God — the one who made the stars made this for your enjoyment, not for your destruction — and explain they should not desecrate the flower. Then if you see them taking off the wings of the butterfly, because they are human that way, explain they should never unnecessarily hurt a creature. They would believe it, they trust you, and then suddenly that’s part of their structure. They couldn’t violate that conditioned mind. Why, it wouldn’t take any time to really become a world like a Blake, and what a world that would be!

So I say to you: Blake, read him. I could talk about him from now to the end of time and never exhaust him. He lived to be seventy years old. He never went to school. His visions began at four, and he thanked his father for not sending him to school to be flogged into memorizing the works of a fool. Even in today’s paper, the New York Times, a science editor wrote the story of a man’s new concept of the universe – radical departure from what was held last year. Well, this is not final you know. This will be a radical departure from what it will be called next year, and that is man’s concept. Whether the thing is really expanding to the limit of complete explosion, or whether it is like a breath — where it will go to a certain point and then once more begin to contract, taking unnumbered trillions of years — they don’t know and they hope to find it out through telescopes. So they are experimenting through the telescope to the mathematical concept. But Blake made this observation:

“God is not a Mathematical Diagram.”
(“Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris”)

Not in eternity will you find God as a mathematical diagram. When you find him you’ll find him as man. So he said:

“God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day.”
(“Auguries of Innocence”)

When you meet him, it’s man. But how can I describe him when he himself describes the body and the form as love. (How do you describe love? Yet I stood in the presence of love and he was human.) But he said:

“For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face
And Love, the human form divine.
(“The Divine Image”)

So how are you going to describe love? When I stood in the presence of love it was human and it was Jesus and it is form, but it is infinite love. Then you understand the words concerning forgiveness:

“In Heaven the only Art of Living
Is Forgetting and Forgiving.”
(“Notes,” Plate 81)

And you stand in his presence and you hear these words ring out: “Forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) “Mutual forgiveness of each vice; such are the Gates of Paradise.” No one can get through holding any resentment, because you are holding it against a being when it should be a state, and the states are fixed forever through which we pass.

I would encourage everyone to read Blake. He grows every year bigger and bigger in the minds of men, yet he died and is buried in an unknown grave. I doubt if anyone truly knows where he is buried. Possibly, because he was poor in those days in England, they buried the paupers four and six to a grave. So who knows where he is buried? At least we have his works, those that survived. And so, after 200 years here is this giant, and in his day we had men that can only be remembered because there was certain violence, like George III, who reigned where he lived, when this was a colony. And here this mad George, truly mad, and nothing was more sane than Blake. And George who was then King of England – we founded his colony – could give away sections of it, vast areas to those that he favored – mad as a hatter! And they called Blake the madman! And Cowper, who did go mad (three times he was put away) – he appeared to Blake and asked Blake to make him truly mad. Not mad as the world judges it, because there are unbalanced mental states, no question about it. “Make me as mad, Blake, till I become like you, a refugee from unbelief.” He was torn between the two.

If I could only go all out and believe in the reality of my imaginal act and not look back. Just go all out, and believe that things are as I desire them to be. But don’t look down now to my understanding to see if it is really happening, like pulling up the little seed to see if it is taking root. Really believe that it is going to take root and in its own way it unfolds within itself and grows. But don’t pull it up; walk right out in the belief that things are as I desire them to be, even though at the very moment it seems darker than ever. And if I do that, that is what Blake did.

They said that many a day he had not a potato in the house and no money. His wife must have been an angel of angels. To remind him there was no food in the house – and then he would have to go out and sell one of his paintings, or get a commission to make a painting – she would put before him on the bare table an empty plate and a spoon, so when he came to dinner, well, that’s it. He took the hint and then would go out and either borrow a pound or a few shillings, or try to get a commission for a picture he had not yet painted. He lived in that so-called dream world. But what he has done to posterity! How he has affected the entire world. And when you think today that no one who understands the English tongue, called upon to make a list of the six greatest users of English tongue of all times, has the same order of value, but within six they could not omit the name of Blake. And he never went to school. Just that inspired mind, the greatest most wonderful mind.

He said he talked to Isaiah and Ezekiel and he asked them about Imagination and they said: “In ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.”
(“Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Plate 12)

Well now, I could not if I told you for the rest of my days exhaust or do justice to Blake, but just enough to encourage you to read him for yourself. And take my experience, having paid one thousand dollars for the works of Blake, you buy Blake and omit the commentaries. I have them at home and I read them and they remain read but not to be re-read. But I make Blake my daily companion as I do the Bible. So take Blake and take the Bible and read it. If you don’t understand him at first reading, re-read it and keep on re-reading. I’ll tell you one thing it will do for you: it will increase your vocabulary and lift your use of words to the heights.

Now let us go into the silence.

QUESTION: What is the symbol of the Lark?

ANSWER: When he said: “A Skylark wounded in the wing, a Cherubim does cease to sing,” he identifies that skylark as but the externalized shadow of the song of a cherubim. He calls this the world of shadows (“Jerusalem,” Plate 71) faintly reflecting an activity that cannot be seen by mortal eye; that the heavenly world enacted has thrown its shadow to interest man in some strange way in this world. For man is in a world of sea, it is on the sea. His greatest poem, “Jerusalem,” begins on the theme: “Of the Sleep of Ulro!” This fantastic world is called “Ulro” by him, where we are so sound asleep it is likened unto “Eternal Death.” And he calls upon us to “Awake.” So all these will aid us to awake. So, if the cherubim by his song in this world, through the shadow of a bird called the “Skylark”…

But we go out and we doubt, for instance, as friends of mine (I call them my friends) – wait eagerly for the dove season. And of course, I have always refused their dinner invitations to come and dine on doves. I love the doves. They come all over my place, and when the mourning doves are beginning to coo… And coming from Barbados as I did we have a certain native feeling toward the dove, and so they are fed. If you listen to him carefully the male dove is actually saying: “Moses spoke God’s word,” and then the female answers: “He did, he did.” I listen to it every morning. And then someone shoots him and asks me to come and dine! He tells us of the little lamb: “The Lamb misus’d breeds Public Strife and yet forgives the Butcher’s knife.” For that purpose, to feed these vegetable bodies — the shadow, the mortal body — you forgive them that use of the knife. But to abuse it: “The Lamb misus’d breeds Public Strife, and yet forgives the Butcher’s knife.”

Neville Goddard 09-27-1968

A new idea will not become part of your common currency of thought until it has been repeated over and over and you begin to live by it. 

You have been taught to believe that God exists outside of you, but I say you are all Imagination. That God exists in us and we in him. That our eternal body is the Imagination, and that is God Himself. I mean every word I have just said, but it is a new thought. Until this new idea becomes a part of your thinking, every time you hear the word, “God,” your mind will go out to something you have conceived God to be.

When I say I am, I am speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament and the Jehovah of the Old. When you go to bed tonight and put your head on a pillow, you are aware of being. That awareness is God! I want to show you how to use your awareness as brazen impudence.

In the 11th chapter of Luke, it is said that Jesus was praying when one of his disciples said: “Lord, teach us to pray,” at which time he gave them the Lord’s Prayer. Now, the Lord’s Prayer that you and I have is translated from the Latin, which does not have the imperative passive mood necessary to convey the meaning of the prayer. In its original Greek, the prayer is like brazen impudence, for the imperative passive mood is a standing order, something to be done absolutely and continuously. In other words, “Thy will be done,” becomes “Thy will must be being done.” And “Thy kingdom come” becomes “Thy kingdom must be being restored.”

That is not what is being taught, however, as he taught in the form of a parable such as: “Which of you who has a friend would go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him,’ and from within he says, ‘Do not bother me; the door is shut and my children are in bed. I cannot rise and give you anything.’ Yet I tell you, although he will not rise because he is a friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” The word importunity means brazen impudence. In other words, he would not take No for an answer!

Jesus was not teaching a disciple on the outside how to pray. He was telling you how to adjust your thinking so you will not take No for an answer. In the story the friend knew what he wanted. He assumed he had it and continued to assume he had it until his assumption took on the feeling of reality and he got it. This is how you find God in yourself, by being persistent in your assumption.

Then this story is told to show how you should pray and not lose heart: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man. There was a widow in that city who came constantly, asking him to vindicate her against her enemies. At first he refused, then he said to himself, ‘Although I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this woman bothers me I will vindicate her before she wears me out.’” Again we see the need for persistence in prayer.

When you know how to pray, you will discover that everyone in the world can be used as an instrument to aid the birth of your prayer. They may be condemned in the act and pay society’s price, while you are saved; yet you are the cause of their action.

I will now share with you a very personal story. I tell it to illustrate a principle. Society blamed this lady for what she did, and she paid the price, but I was the cause of her misfortune. I am not going to justify my story and if you can’t take it, I’m sorry. When I first told it, one lady was very upset and I regret that; but I have noticed that when someone has recently given up alcohol, tobacco, meat, or sex, they invariably condemn the state. They feel too close to it to feel secure. I am not saying that this lady had a similar experience where she was the victim; I am only speaking of a principle. Now here is my story:

When I decided to marry the lady who now bears my name I applied this principle. At the time I was terribly involved. I had married at the age of eighteen and became a father at nineteen. We separated that year, but I never sought a divorce; therefore, my separation was not legal in the state of New York. Sixteen years later, when I fell in love and wanted to marry my present wife, I decided to sleep as though we were married. While sleeping, physically in my hotel room, I slept imaginatively in an apartment, she in one bed and I in the other. My dancing partner did not want me to marry, so she told my wife that I would be seeking a divorce and to make herself scarce – which she did, taking up residence in another state. But I persisted! Night after night I slept in the assumption that I was happily married to the girl I love.

Within a week I received a call requesting me to be in court the next Tuesday morning at 10:00 A.M.. Giving me no reason why I should be there, I dismissed the request, thinking it was a hoax played on me by a friend. So the next Tuesday morning at 9:30 A.M. I was unshaved and only casually dressed, when the phone rang and a lady said: “It would be to your advantage, as a public figure, to be in court this morning, as your wife is on trial.” What a shock! I quickly thanked the lady, caught a taxi, and arrived just as court began. My wife had been caught lifting a few items from a store in New York City, which she had not paid for. Asking to speak on her behalf I said: “She is my wife and the mother of my son. Although we have been separated for sixteen years, as far as I know she has never done this before and I do not think she will ever do it again. We have a marvelous son. Please do nothing to her to reflect in any way upon our son, who lives with me. If I may say something, she is eight years my senior and may be passing through a certain emotional state which prompted her to do what she did. If you must sentence her, then please suspend it.” The judge then said to me, “In all of my years on the bench I have never heard an appeal like this. Your wife tells me you want a divorce, and here you could have tangible evidence for it, yet you plead for her release.” He then sentenced her for six months and suspended the sentence. My wife waited for me at the back of the room and said: “Neville, that was a decent thing to do. Give me the subpoena and I will sign it.” We took a taxi together and I did that which was not legal: I served my own subpoena and she signed it.

Now, who was the cause of her misfortune? She lived in another state, but came to New York City to do an act for which she was to be caught and tried. So I say: every being in the world will serve your purpose, so in the end you will say: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They will move under compulsion to do your will, just as my wife did.

I tell this story only to illustrate a principle. You do not need to ask anyone to aid you in the answer to a prayer, for the simple reason that God is omnipotent and omniscient. He is in you as your own wonderful IAmness. Everyone on the outside is your servant, your slave, ready and able to do your will. All you need do is know what you want. Construct a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your desire. Enter the scene and remain there. If your imaginal counselor (your feeling of fulfillment) agrees with that which is used to illustrate your fulfilled desire, your fantasy will become a fact. If it does not, start all over again by creating a new scene and enter it. It costs you nothing to imagine consciously!

In my own case the scene was a bedroom of an apartment, with my wife in one bed and I in the other, denoting that I was no longer living in a hotel alone. I fell asleep in that state, and within one week I had the necessary papers to start action on a divorce.

This is what the Bible teaches. It is my text book. “Whatever you desire, believe you have already received it and you will!”

There is no limit to the power of belief or to the possibilities of prayer, but you must be brazenly impudent and not take No for an answer. Try it! When I say you are all imagination, I mean it. While standing here on the platform I can, in a split-second, imagine I am standing on the outside, looking at this building. Or, in another second be in London and view the world from there. You say that’s all hallucination? That it is all in my imagination? All right, now let me share another experience with you.

I was in New York City when I heard that my seventeen-year-old nephew, my sister’s oldest child, was in a terminal state of cancer. I knew how she felt and wondered what I could do to comfort her – to show her that the boy she so loved was not flesh and blood, but spirit. So while in New York City, I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and lay down on my bed. Knowing that my sister lived in the old family house in Barbados, I assumed I was on the bed where I knew Billy to be. I assumed my sister entered that room but could not see her son, only her brother, Neville. I lost myself in that assumption until my sister, Daphne, entered the room. Looking startled, she came forward, stared at me, then turned and left the room. When I was satisfied that I had seen her, and she had seen me and not her son, I broke the experience and returned to our living room to be with my wife and a friend who had come for cocktails.

Ten days later I received a letter from my sister, in which she said: “Nev, I just can’t understand it.” Giving the day and the hour which coincided with mine in New York City she said: “I went into Billy’s room and I was startled to see you there. I knew you were in New York City, yet I could not see Billy on the bed, only you. I must confess I was a bit afraid, so 1 left the room and when I returned I could see Billy again. She could see Billy because by then I had departed. If I am all imagination, I must be where I am in imagination. When I gave the scene sensory vividness, with all the tones of reality, I was seen by my sister two thousand miles away. No, I didn’t save Billy. He died, but my presence did convince my sister that her son was not flesh and blood. If her brother, in New York City, could appear to her in Barbados, she knew there was something that inhabits a body which cannot go to eternal death.

I tell you: there is an immortal you that cannot die. That night I gave my sister the conviction of a reality in her son that would survive when the doctor said he was gone. Gone where? Restored to a terrestrial world like this as a young lad, to continue a journey that was set up for him in the beginning. And that is to form the image of Jesus Christ in him. When that happens, Billy will awaken as Jesus Christ, the one being who is God the Father.

Practice the art of movement. In New York City, my telephone was in the hallway and my chair in the living room. While sitting in my chair, I would assume I was at the telephone. Then I would assume I was looking into the living room. I practiced this exercise. until I discovered I could move anywhere in a split second of time. Try it and perhaps, like my sister, someone will have the strange experience of seeing you where you have not physically been. Make it fun. I do it all the time.

A lady, thinking I was still in Barbados – where she last saw me painfully thin and weighing only 138 pounds – was hoping I was feeling better, when I instantly appeared in her living room. I was brown from the Barbados sun, wearing a gray suit (which I did not own when I left here, but purchased in New York City) when I said: “There is no time,” and vanished. Well, she is accustomed to these things, so she was not afraid.

I urge you not to limit yourself to a little body of flesh and blood, for you are spirit. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so one day you must take it off. And he who takes it off is immortal. He is your own wonderful human imagination who is God, the Father of all life. When you learn to live this way, life becomes so exciting. Your days are full and you are never alone. I spend all day at home reading the Bible and meditating. I close my eyes and travel the world. It’s fun and educational. It expands me and makes me become more aware of the infinite being that I really am.

Now, the two stories from scripture that I have shared with you show the importance of persistence. When you pray, do not get down on your knees and pray to any unknown God. Instead, go to bed and dare to assume you are now who you want to be. Fall asleep assuming it is true and you will be on the road to success, for this is how things are brought into being.

Right now imagine something lovely for another. They need never know who was the cause of their fortune – but you will. My first wife did not know I was the cause of her action. Had she thought that her act would mean my freedom and her disgrace do you think she would have done it? She moved under compulsion, and I was the compelling force. When you realize this, you forgive everyone for everything they have ever done, because you may have been the one who was the cause of their action.

Blake said: “Why stand we here trembling around calling on God for help and not ourselves in whom God dwells.” Why call on any god, when the only God dwells within you? He is not pretending, but actually became you. When you confine yourself to the little garment you wear, you are confining God, because it is he who is wearing it.

You need no intermediary between you and yourself, who is God. Don’t run from this city to another in the hope of finding something better, because the one person you are going to take with you is yourself; so resolve your problems here. Do not compromise. Decide exactly what you want and assume you have it. If your world would change, determine what it would look like; then construct a scene which would imply you are there. If your mental construction comes close to your fulfilled desire, your little day dream will become a fact! And when it does, will it matter what others think about your principle? Having proved itself in performance, share your experience with another that they may share theirs. Keep sharing this principle, because in the end we are all the one being who is the Lord Jesus Christ. One body, one Lord, one Spirit, one God and Father of all. Don’t be ashamed to claim it. Man sees the Lord Jesus Christ as some little being on the outside; but he is in you, and when you see him, he will look just like you!

A friend recently shared this sweet vision with me. She said: “I saw a man in a white robe standing on a hill, building a canopy over the entrance to a temple. As I approached I could see that the stripes used for the canopy were translucent green and I remarked how radiantly beautiful they were. The man turned to look at me and I realized it was you, Neville, and yet you were Michelangelo. Then you addressed me saying: ‘I have been working on this throughout eternity and it still remains invisible to others’. Taking the stripes, I wove them into the form of a basket and you thanked me and said: ‘Great work’ and I awoke.” That was a beautiful dream. I have been telling the story of the resurrection throughout eternity, but it has never been put into living form. It still remains dead, like Michelangelo’s Pieta, or his David made out of marble.

Let David become alive in the minds of others. Give life to the Pieta, the crucified one on the mother’s lap. The story is public property, now a dead written code awaiting life in the imagination of men. Dramatize salvation’s story. Make it into a play or a television show and let Michelangelo’s Pieta become alive. I have made the story alive because I have experienced it.
Michelangelo, with his tremendous know-how of the human form, created the dead forms made of marble. I came along, unable to mold a stick, to find the dead forms taking on life in me. It is my hope that one day this wonderful story will be told as it really is, against the story that we have heard for over two thousand years.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 11-20-1967

William Blake, in his poem “The Four Zoas: a Dream of Nine Nights,” tells of God’s fall into division and his resurrection to unity – his fall into generation, decay, and death and his resurrection into the unity of the one Father. Associating his poem with the 6th chapter of Ephesians, the 12th verse, he states: “We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” So we see that the fall into division and the resurrection into unity is mental.

From beginning to end, the Bible speaks of a certain temple that is being constructed. And every day we are building our temple for the dwelling place of God the Father. In the 2nd chapter of the Book of Ephesians, we are told: “The whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it as a living structure of God in the Spirit.” In other words, as you bring your building and I bring mine, we are fitted together as living stones in the building of God.

Let me explain this with a story told me just this past week. This is an experience of a lady who is very much a lady and only recently had a little baby. She said: “In my dream I am three people. I am myself, yet I am a man. As myself, I long for a little green dog. Becoming another, I see my dog standing among others. He shines like the sun and because I have ordered him I know all I have to do is wait for his arrival.

“Now, in my dream I am always the sender. When something is to be told, I tell it to another (which is myself), then I become the other in order to retell the story to the third. Becoming the third, I then tell the second to tell the first. I know it doesn’t make sense on this level, but as the third person speaking, I hear the message as the second, and say to myself – the first: ‘The dog is yours now.’ And as the first I am so happy to hear the news.

“Again as the third person, I tell the second to say to the first: ‘Your building is finished. All you have to do is turn around to take it.’ Now as the first person, my little dog disappears and I am looking at my many new buildings being constructed. Then I remember that my building is finished and all I have to do is turn around and claim it – when my little baby cries and awakens me.”

On the surface her vision appears to be nothing, but it has tremendous significance. Her green dog shining like the sun is Caleb in scripture. Caleb is he who goes with Joshua into the Promised Land. In the story, Caleb – having faith in the God who promised Israel land – was sent by Moses along with other spies into Canaan. Upon returning, Caleb said: “Attack immediately” but the men who had gone with him were afraid; so only the two, Caleb and Joshua (the Hebraic form of the word “Jesus”), entered.

In her dream she is waiting for a little green dog. The word “green” in this dream means “pressing with sap; luscious; health.” Bursting with all that is mine, I will take you to lie down in green pastures. Full of faith in the God who promised land to Israel, Caleb is highly recommended, as only two can enter. Others had the dog and others will find him, for she is not the only one who enters the promised land. Now, who was waiting for his companion? God! As the third, the second is told and tells the first that the dog is now hers. Then the experience is repeated, as she once more becomes the sender (the teller), but she is never the receiver, for God only acts and is in existing beings or men.

Now, as the first person she realizes that the little dog has disappeared. Why? Because she has already entered the promised land. Seeing the fabulous construction going on, she is reminded that her building is finished and all she had to do is turn around and see it. There are two passages in scripture, one in the 12th chapter of Acts and the other in the 15th chapter of Luke, where the Greek word “heautou” is translated “he came to himself.” In the Book of Luke these words were spoken of the prodigal son. And in the Book of Acts, Peter was imprisoned and shackled in chains. His garments were sold and he was alone in the cell, when the angel of the Lord entered, touched him, and as he rose, it is said: “he came to himself.” Now, this word “heautou” could have been translated, “he turned around; it is fulfilled; it is finished; to be married.” And she heard the words: “All you need to do is turn around.” Turn around and you will behold the finished structure. As a living stone you have now contributed to the overall structure, which is the temple of the Living God. I know from my own experience, everyone contributes to that one Living Stone called the kingdom of heaven! You will be turned around by a force that is greater than anything known to man, but it will not happen until the end. You cannot physically turn around, nor can you force the mind to do it.

Now, Blake tells us: “God fell into division” and this lady divided herself into three. Now heading for the end of the journey, when the force that is holding you to this world is relieved, you will turn around to see the structure your Father built and you will know that you are He. Your temple is not built by another. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Who is he? I am he who began the good work in you. “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction. For my own sake I do it, for my own sake, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” Your journey is at its end, my dear. You saw the perfect vision. Your building is finished and all you have to do is turn around. This will come at the end, for if you should turn around you will vanish, for, like Paul, you have fought the good fight. Let no one tell you Paul was exaggerating; it is a fight, for we are contending not with flesh and blood.

At the present moment someone is treading the wine press of hate, and – unrestrained – the thought is sent on its wings of feeling. Perhaps sitting in a dungeon this night, someone is treading the wine press of war, and some little boy out in the field catches the idea and wanting to be a hero dreams of becoming a great general, commanding the destruction of the world. He is dreaming and you can’t stop his dream. So you are not warring against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, and heaven is within. In the inside of your mind these abominable, loathsome beings are carved. They are unseen forces impinging upon you morning, noon, and night.

But oh, what a thrill to get a letter of this nature! Her building is finished. She now knows that she only sends! She gave the order, saw herself as another, receiving, but when the message must be retold she once more became the teller. And when it is to be experienced, she will be the one who experiences it. So God only acts and is in existing beings or men, for God is playing all the parts.

In the end everyone brings his living temple to the house of God. Ephesians tells us how the structure is joined together and how the holy temple grows in the Spirit. It’s a spiritual temple, not one in this world. Scripture calls the church “the body of Christ”, but the word translated “church” is “communion of the assemblage of the redeemed.” It’s the assemblage of those whose building is finished. Playing the part of the receiver, we are the one being who is the builder. Finding Caleb, you (as Joshua, who is Jesus) are led into the Promised Land, as scripture is fulfilled. Having shone like the sun in order to lead you in, Caleb disappears leaving Jesus only. And who is Jesus? Your own wonderful human imagination!

Now let me share another story. Three years ago, in a dream, this lady saw a man who embodied everything she could ever desire. They fell in love and an engagement was announced. Then, thinking she was awake, she put on her nightgown and retired in the hope that he would join her. But as he entered the room the man shook his head and said: “Not yet, but I will return.” This month the same man returned and implied by his look that he had come to complete the promise of marriage. I can tell her that, although it hasn’t been accomplished, she had the perfect revelation of that which is coming to her. She now has the assurance that: “I will come again and receive you into myself, that where I am there, you shall be also.” This is all beautiful symbolism. This lady is not about to be married in this world of ours to a flesh and blood man of such magnitude. No, he is the symbol of the being spoken of in Isaiah: “Your maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name.” The promise is being kept in her. and one day she will turn around within herself and become that living temple of the Risen Lord.

I have seen the temple, and when I leave the garment relative to this age I will enter an entirely different age. And like Paul it is my desire to depart and be with Christ, but it is more important at the moment to remain and encourage you, even though you are fighting against principalities, powers of darkness, and all the horrors of the world. But I have seen the building being constructed for you, not by another, but by your deeper self, who is God the Father.

In 1952, while living in New York City, I had a thirst that only an experience of God could quench. “As the hart panteth after the waterways, so panteth my soul after thee, Oh God.” Then one night out of the blue I found myself fulfilling the 42nd Psalm: “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul. How I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God.”

That night I found myself leading an enormous procession toward the house of God. It was still in the distance, but as I led them a voice rang out: “And God walks with them.” A woman at my side questioned the voice, saying: “If God walks with us, where is he?” And the voice replied: “At your side.” Looking at me and seeing a man of flesh and blood, she said: “You mean Neville is God?” and the voice replied: “Yes, in the act of waking.” Then the voice spoke only to me, saying: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and suddenly I knew that he was dreaming he was me. At that moment memory returned, and I became six vortices, which I felt enter my hands, my feet, my head, and my side. That was when I knew the ecstasy of the crucifixion.

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, divided the tenses, saying: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” The crucifixion is past. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” If this is true, then the universal Christ gave us himself, for did he not say: “No man takes my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again.” And we are laid down with him, because he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So, if you are united with him in a death like his, you will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. I know this is true, for he was resurrected in me, confirming the story of scripture. This is how the structure is enhanced and grows in God. And when the final curtain comes down and the temple is perfect, you will be God the Father and I will be God the Father, yet none of us will lose our identity!

Now I ask you to continue to test your creative power by practicing revision. If you hear something that is unlovely, don’t accept it, but instantly revise it. Hear the words that ought to have been spoken and persuade yourself, to the best of your ability, that it is so. What would it matter if you owned the world tonight and departed tomorrow to find yourself working as a fry cook, serving up flap cakes? Live your life fully while here, but remember you can’t take your money with you.

So, enjoy the things of this world and apply this wonderful law for yourself and others, for imagining truly does create reality. And remember: you are not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and darkness of the rulers of this world and spiritual evil in heavenly places. And one day, you who have fallen into division will resurrect into unity!

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard 6-24-1956

My subject this morning is taken from the First Epistle of John. Now these twenty-one letters (or as we call them, epistles) are not really addressed to individuals or groups. They are mysteries, as is the entire Bible. Whether the Bible in the Old Testament tells the story in the form of history, or whether they tell it in the form of a parable, or whether in the form of a letter, they are all revelations of the mind of God expressed in symbolism.

Now, I do not claim that I can give you an exhaustive interpretation of any single story of the Bible. Because they are revelations of the mind of the Infinite, no single interpretation could ever be exhaustive. On one level it may be true, and then you and I expand in consciousness and we re-read the letter and see it differently, and a further expansion in consciousness causes us – even when we re-read it for the fiftieth time – to still see the letter in a different light. So in this morning’s interpretation I will try to keep it on a level that is most practical.

We are told in the First John, 5: “This is He that came by water and blood even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood.” So these are symbols of birth. Every natural birth in the world is accompanied by the flowing of water and blood. It’s trying to tell the individual of a certain mystery of birth, but he uses the words Christ Jesus and that is the symbol of a truly mysterious birth – something out of nothing. That is the mystery. Out of death, life. Man cannot conceive it. How can something alive come out of that which is dead – how can something come out of nothing? Man accepts it in the mineral world, for he sees, if he goes back far enough in time (he could push the mystery in some remote past), he will accept the fact that sometime, in a way not known to modern science, out of non-organic substance came organism. He will call it by some little tiny name: an amoeba, and that will satisfy his mind. But he stops; he still will not admit that he stated that there was a non-organic substance, or nothing, or something that was dead, out of which came life, out of which came something. He doesn’t want to wrestle with that problem, so he leaves that, jumps over the pages of history, and comes to some little thing more complex. Then he teaches evolution from that state. But when he goes far enough back he finds no answer for the appearance of life out of nothing or death.

So here is the mystery. It comes by water and by blood – not by water only, but by water and blood. This is the great mystery of the incarnation, the death, and the resurrection. What incarnation? What death, and what resurrection? The mind instantly thinks in terms of 2,000 years ago and we think that was the great mystery. But before I jump into the mystery let me quote you the very last verse of this wonderful 5th chapter: “Little children keep yourselves from idols.” No matter how officialdom justifies them and tells you this is the image of your savior revealed through the minds of a saint or a great artist, you are warned in this chapter to keep yourselves free of idols, in harmony with the second commandment: “Thou shall make no graven image unto the Lord thy God.” No matter how it is justified by officialdom or orthodox society, you are asked please not to make anything external to your own mind and bow before it as creative power, for here he is trying to reveal the true creative power that is in man. It sleeps in man as his passive mind. As you unfold the mystery, it awakens from its passive state into its active state, and the birth of active mind is truly the resurrection of Christ in man. It is Christ in man. It is Christ in man that is the hope and the glory.

Now, here in another verse he gives you a test. He asks you to ask whatsoever thing in this world in my name, that the Father may give it you. He did not restrict you to one desire; ask whatsoever thing you desire in my name and the Father will give it to you. Now, if you take it literally, as I have heard thousands of prayers in my own homeÂ… Raised in a Christian atmosphere, we said grace at meals and Mother invariably said it, and invariably ended with the words: “For Jesus’ sake, amen” – but nothing happened. We ate the food and enjoyed the food. And you will say prayers, long verbal appeals to God for something, always ending: “For Jesus’ sake, amen,” thinking that if I said it was for his sake that I would [thus] tempt my Father to give it to me. For did he not say: “Whatsoever thing ye desire, ask it in my name, and the Father will give it to you”? Well, you ask it forever in that name, and nothing happens – therefore, he didn’t understand the mystery. So what is the mystery? Even Jesus Christ, who came not by water only, but by water and the blood.

We have put it into the most practical manner in the world – something out of nothing, life out of death. Conceive of something you desire. Just think of it. The mere thinking of something – that is a conception unaided by another. Is that not an “immaculate conception?” You knew no one in the formulation of your desire. Now you intend to “realize it.” It is clear in your mind’s eye; it is a holy conception, it is a virgin conception. Can you bring about that something that seemingly is not existing – it is non-existent, it has no existence in fact – and embody it? Can you incarnate it? For this is the mystery of the incarnation that comes by water and blood. Here is a birth that could take place if I am willing to give it human parentage. I must give it human parentage. It cannot of itself be born, for unless I myself become it, it cannot be born; so I desire to be something other than what I am.

Now what is the water? The water is the great mystery, the great psychological truth that I must discover which will enable me, if I accept it, to live a life according to that truth and give expression to my desire. For water is the truth and the blood is the application of that truth. I could know everything in the world to be known of the mystery, but never live by it – still continue to live as I have always lived, passively accepting the evidence of my senses as fact, accepting the dictates of reason as my guide. I could overhear a conversation or could read it in a book, or hear it in a place like this on Sunday morning. That if you desire something intensely and you truly desire it, and you have a clear mental picture of what you would like to be or what you would like to accomplish, or what you would like another friend to realize – you know exactly what you would like in this world. Now, this is the water by which it could be born. But it cannot be born of water only; it must be born of water and blood. So I will give you the water. When you know what you want, you make as vivid and as lifelike a representation of what you would see, of what you would hear, and what you would do, were you physically present and physically moving about in such a situation.

To take an example: Suppose I desired a certain apartment, or home, or business. (Take one, so you will not be confused. We will take an apartment.) But reason tells me I cannot afford it. Reason tells me I haven’t enough furniture for so big an apartment. Reason tells me a thousand things that would deny that I could ever realize it, but I still would like it. Now this is what I would give you in the form of water, for something must come out of nothing and life out of death. To embody that state I make it real. You pull it seemingly from a state that is non-existent, therefore something out of nothing. To make it real and to incarnate it and to become alive to it and it to you, you are pulling life out of death.

Now this is what you do. There is a death involved but it is not the kind of death that men call death. There is a death – there is a radical change of state of mind. You completely give up the belief that you are not living in such a place. That is irrational. But that is what you are called upon to do, to completely deny the evidence of your senses and to boldly assume that you are already in that state that you occupy. There you dwell in a state that reason denies. You dwell in an assumption that your senses deny. That is [not] just the water. If you do it, you are applying the blood. If you are told to do it you are given the truth, for it will work. That water, if you could only add the blood to it, will bring the invisible state into the visible world, and what seemingly is non-existent will crystallize and harden into fact. But if you only know it as too many of us know it, and think the mere knowledge is enough, we will come here on Sunday and thoroughly enjoy this wonderful hour – the music, the message, the meditation, the feeling of companionship you find here. And the whole thing is a thrill for an hour – but such knowledge cannot bring Christ Jesus to birth. In this state, Christ Jesus (now I’ll analyze it for you)… on a lower plane the word, “Jesus” (Heb. Jeshua) means “salvation, to save.”

So if I desire something and I don’t realize it, then I simply continue a life of frustration. If I realize my objective, I have been saved from frustration. Take a simple matter: Suppose I wanted a suit of clothes because I was in need of raiment. If I don’t realize the suit of clothes, I am not saved from my nudity. If I realize the suit of clothes, I have been saved. For this is an all- inclusive savior, not just a man. If I wanted water, literal water, a lecture will not quench my thirst. If I wanted food, literal food, the most wonderful revelation would not actually satisfy my hunger. So Jesus is all-inclusive, meaning everything you desire. He is it, because if you embodied that desire, you embodied your Jesus. Now, to embody Jesus, he cannot be embodied by the knowledge of what to do only. He can only be embodied by the application of that knowledge. So the knowledge of what to do is called water, the “water of truth”; but the use of that lovingly is called the flowing (shedding) of the blood.

So here we find the symbols that always accompany birth, that which is presented in this mystery. You are told the limit is within you. You make the limit; there is no limit. Whatsoever you desire, ask in my name, for name simply means nature. If I wanted to be in a house and to feel that I am the occupant of that house, there is a certain feeling, a certain nature that goes with it. I must appropriate it as though it were true. Here I am called upon to bring something alive out of a state that is dead. For if I told you what I have done, you would question my sanity and you would feel I am trying to give expression to something that is being pulled out of nothing. For you cannot see it -you don’t see me in the house, you don’t see me actually occupying and enjoying the life that you know I desire to enjoy. So if I persist in that assumption, to you (if you should know my persistence) you might think I am headed towards a form of insanity. But if tomorrow the house becomes an embodied fact and I the occupant, then you look at it passively and you will still try to justify it by tracing its appearance back to a visible cause. You will see that in some way, unknown to you, my resources were lifted up, that in some way I became more eligible for that house and you will trace it back to a change in my fortune. You will trace it back to a change in something in my world, but you won’t trace these changes back to the unseen assumption in which I dwell.

So, as the mystic tells us in Hebrews 11: “Things unseen were not made of things that do appear.” Man refuses to accept it, so he takes everything in his world and tries to take it back to some visible cause, even with the aid of his microscope. He takes the microscope and he will peer through it to prove to his own satisfaction there is a visible, tangible cause; or he goes off into space with his telescope. He must find in the outer world causes of the changes in the outer world. He cannot believe that the whole vast outer world is held together from within. And if we are only on the surface looking at it from without – trying to analyze it and to understand it from without and all that appears without – though it seems there, it isn’t. It is all from within, all within the mind of man, and that is the mystery!

So do not make an idol, no matter who makes you the idol, no matter what holy man tells you this is a wonderful thing that will bless you. There is no blessing in states on the outside. Bow to nothing on the outside. We have wondered why throughout the centuries a certain race of people did not become greater sculptors, greater artists in the form of painting, great religious teachers. Maybe they were really taking that second commandment very, very seriously. Make no graven image – no not one- unto me. Make nothing that is graven, that is objective, as image of your Father that is free, for I AM Spirit. If you were to worship me, worship me in spirit and in truth but not in anything that you can turn to on the outside and bend the knee before, whether it be a church, a synagogue, or some statue that hangs upon your wall. He is not there. He is in your mind. He is housed within you; there is the living God within the temple and the temple is man. “Ye are the temple of the living God.”

So when I speak of the water and the blood, I speak not of the things that you can see with the eye, such as water and blood. They are only symbolized functions of the mind and the function first comes with water. I must first know what to do before I can do it. So water comes first. He takes water and puts it into a stone jar gives it something like a shape, and from that stone jar filled with water, he draws – not water, but he converts it; he draws wine (blood).

So here is the first miracle. I know what to do. I take this little world of mine that is one, and then I extract from it something that is not seen. Not quite as hard as that – I call it water. I see something bringing all this into being. I know how it’s brought into being. That a man living in luxury is not to be judged harshly because he has it and you haven’t it. He is living in a state of consciousness that solidifies in the form that you see now and call luxurious. One in a state of health, one who is recognized, one who is accomplished, one who is contributing much to the world -don’t judge them. These are states made visible. Find out if you can. Get into a similar state. He is not occupying the only state in the world. There are infinite states and if you try even to duplicate that state (if it can be duplicated, or you can get close to it or you can transcend it) find out within your own mind’s eye what you want. Don’t be envious of him. Leave him alone for he is applying the law. He is entitled to everything in this world that he can actually conceive and desire and put himself into and live it, for man is living in an infinite world of invisible states and an individual wisely or foolishly occupies a state. While he remains faithful to the state, the state will externalize and become the circumstances and the conditions of his life. The moment he detaches himself in consciousness from that state, the things that he enjoyed before vanish from his world.

Now, if everything in my world depends upon a state of consciousness, it would be the height of insanity to seek the thing before I actually fix within myself the state on which the thing depends, for that which requires a state of consciousness to produce its effect cannot be effected without such a state of consciousness. So when I know what I want, to support that there is an invisible state of consciousness. The world calls that invisible state a non-existing nothingness. They cannot even call it a thing, for to them it has no existence, no reality. That is the mystery: a self-begotten child conceived unaided by another and carried faithfully in the womb of God – which is the mind of man. It was placed there without the aid of another, by man’s desire. That was the immaculate conception; that’s the virgin conception.

Now, the virgin birth – can I bring it from its invisible state and really make it a tangible fact within my world? Try it! As you try it with one thing and you succeed, you will try it with two and four and eight and so on, and eventually the sleeping giant in man – which is the Son of God in man called Christ – will awaken. He will awaken by moving from the passive state to the active state. The passive state is simply the complete and utter surrender of man to appearances, to live believing that life is on the outside, and he moves from that state where he surrenders and believes all these things to be causes to the active state, where he puts everything in subjection to that something within himself which is his awakened imagination. He imagines a thing to be so; he persuades himself that it is so and walks faithful to his assumption.

Then you will know why in Romans 14 he tells us that every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (don’t persuade her, leave her alone). You persuade yourself of the changes you desire expressed in her. If you desire a change in your relationships at home or in business, you don’t argue, you don’t persuade them. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. So can I persuade myself that you are as I desire to see you? Then, to the degree that I can persuade myself, you will conform in the outer world to that persuasion. If I hope to see changes there before I myself will start the change on the inside, the chances are I will hope in vain. You, yourself, may desire certain changes and I might see them change in my world, but they were not caused because I moved into an active state. I am still reflective, and most of us in this world are reflecting life; and the purpose of a church of this nature is to make us not reflect but to affect life. If I affect, then Christ is awakened within me. If I only reflect it, then I sleep with Adam, and the purpose is to move from the sleep of Adam to the wakefulness of the Son of God called Christ. Adam too, is called the son of God but in the state of profound sleep. But he moves from that state of sleep – or the passive state of mind – to the active state, will be no nearer the proving of it than you are now. But if you took a little bit, one drop of this water, and went out even to disprove it – in order to disprove it, you must seriously and sincerely try it. If you try it, you won’t disprove it. You will be encouraged to drink more water and still more and bring about this birth of your savior, and you decide what will save you today from your present predicament. It may be a job, it may be an increase of funds, it may be companionship, it may be something I don’t know – but whatever it is that you this day desire (and unless you get it you feel thwarted, you feel frustrated), then it would save you if you got it. Now take that as your savior. Look into your mind’s eye and see it clearly. It may seem almost sacrilegious to the orthodox mind to tell you that when you see clearly in your mind’s eye the state desired – either for self or another – you are actually looking into the face of Jesus, for you are seeing the state that could save you from where you are or what you are.

So you try it and the mind will expand. You will find yourself not only increasing in this world, in the outer world, but you will find mystical revelations taking place within you, which is the purpose of the teaching. It is not just to bring about changes in the inner that man ascends on higher levels of consciousness. The purpose of the whole appearance is to awaken from the lowest descent on the ladder to the highest. He is ascending to the highest, for we are told in the vision of Jacob: above it all stood God – on the ladder stood these heavenly beings ascending and descending – but above all stood God. So the real destiny of man is to reach the height that he may awaken as God.

So the mystery is: God became man that man may become God. He came down as man. Take the same verse and give it a higher interpretation. So here God died – yes, died – to become man. The death of God is complete forgetfulness of the fact that he is God. He had to completely forget that he is God, therefore died to awaken as man. If he remembered he was God, he just couldn’t be as man, but a complete and utter death, which is forgetfulness that I am God to become man. So the poet wrote it beautifully and said: “God became man that man may become God.” He said: “Unless I die you could not live, but if I die I shall arise again and you with me.” Then he goes on to ask a man: “Could you love one who had never died for thee or could you die for one who had not died for thee,” and so he is putting this into the most wonderful poetical mystery in the book, “Jerusalem” by Blake.

He reveals to the mind who can see it, that you who believe yourself because you are visible, and you must do what man passively must do – he traces your origin back to a germ. As long as you began as a germ, you are no more than a big germ. If you begin as something else, you are only something enlarged of the same thing. For all ends run true to origins. If I can take you back where you cannot see it, and take you back to the great mystery that you are actually begotten of God – if your origin is God, your end is God. If your origin is a bug then your end is a bug. So you have the “choice.” The passive mind (which is really the scientific mind) must still insist on finding causes external to itself. It cannot find causes in that passive state within itself.

I tell you: the great mystery is that you came out of a seeming death. It is a death. God died to become man, because he desired the companionship of men as Gods, as the poet told us:

Man should not stay a man.
His aim should higher be.
For God will only Gods accept as company.

So you cannot in your present state of the passive mind be companions of your Father, who longs and desires that every son, every child, awakens to become companions of Deity. So to do it, he had to die as God, and became his creation in the hope that the creation would awaken and become his companion.

But you see he gave us such a gift. He completely freed me of the responsibility of returning. I don’t have to awaken; I am as free as the wind. He gave me complete freedom of will. I may hurt myself, ruin myself, but because of the gift of God to me, to make me alive, he cannot interfere and make me awake. He may appeal through awakened children and they may appeal to their sleeping brother, but they cannot by the same law interfere and make me awake. They can only appeal and try in some subtle way to suggest, but the gift was absolute. God gave himself to become me, finding myself, man. I think my origin was man, so my destiny – no matter how big a man I become, no matter how wise a man – it will still be a man. But if my origin is God my destiny is God, and I will awaken one day to discover this wonderful unfolding mystery within me.