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Neville Goddard Influential New Thought Teacher (1905-1972)

December 22, 2013

by Wisdom Master with 2 Comments Imagination Neville Goddard neville goddard feeling is the secret neville goddard law and promise neville goddard law of assumption neville goddard lectures neville goddard power of awareness neville goddard power of imagination neville goddard quotes neville goddard wisdom

Neville Goddard, better known as just Neville, was one of the quietly dramatic and supremely influential teachers in the New Thought field for many years…In a simple, yet somehow elegant one-hour lecture, Neville was able to clarify the nature of God and God’s relationship to every person. He spoke of God in intimate terms as though he knew God very well, which he did.

Joseph Murphy, a writer and lecturer, who studied with Neville in New York City, said of him: “Neville may eventually be recognized as one of the world’s great mystics,”

Born on Barbados in the British West Indies, Neville was the fourth child in a family of nine boys and one girl. One day some of them were playing near an old wind-swept hut by the sea. A seer lived in the hut and told them their fortunes, The older sons would go into the professions, into medicine, into business. The predictions for them came true. The Goddard family is one of the most prominent and influential families on the island.

“Do not touch the fourth one,” the seer said, pointing to Neville, “he has a special mission to perform in the world – from God.” And to Neville, “You will journey to a distant land and spend your life there.” This prediction also came true. As a young man he went to America and worked in some of the department stores in New York City. Later, he worked in the theatre with the Schubert’s.

Under unusual circumstances, he met a black Jew, named Abdullah, who lectured on Christianity. Neville went to hear him, somewhat under protest, to satisfy the constant urging of a friend, “Whose judgment I did not respect,” Neville said, “because he made such poor financial investments.”

Neville said he was seated in the auditorium waiting for the lecture to begin, when the speaker – who had never met Neville came down the aisle from the rear of the auditorium to the stage.

“You are late, Neville!” Abdullah said, “six months’ late! I have been told to expect you.” From this introduction, Neville studied with Abdullah seven days a week for seven years.

“Abdullah taught me Hebrew, he taught me The Kabbalah, and he taught me more about real Christianity than anyone I ever met,” Neville declared.

Neville originally came to the United States to study drama at the age of seventeen. In 1932 he gave up the theater to devote his attention to his studies in mysticism when he began his lecture career in New York City. After traveling throughout the country, he eventually made his home in Los Angeles where, in the late 1950’s, he gave a series of talks on television, and for many years, lectured regularly to capacity audiences at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. In the 1960’s and early ‘70s, he confined most of his lectures to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

Neville once said that if he was stranded on an island and was allowed one book, he would choose, The Bible, without hesitation. If he could squeeze in more, he would add Charles Fillmore’s Metaphysical Dictionary of Bible names, William Blake, (“… Why stand we here trembling around, Calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?”) and Nicoll’s Commentaries. These were the books he recommended at his lectures.

In his lectures and books, Neville dealt solely with The Law until the year 1959, “For I did not know of The Promise until I began to experience it and have it unfold within me beginning that summer and continuing during the next three-and-one-half years. And this is Scriptural,” he would say, “read it in the of Book of Daniel where it is referred to as ‘a time, times, and a half.’ It comes to 1260 days in your experience of it.”

In his use of The Law, he related how he made a sea voyage from New York to see his family in Barbados during the Depression, without any money of his own. He related how, by the use of imaginal power, he was honorably discharged from military service to continue his lectures during World War 11. He gave his audiences in San Francisco in the 1950’s and ‘60s accounts of how others had made use of The Law. He discussed it on television in the Los Angeles area, “Learn how to use your imaginal power, lovingly, on behalf of others, for Man is moving into a world where everything is subject to his imaginal power,” he taught.

In the latter part of the 1960’s and early ‘70’s Neville gave more emphasis to The Promise after he had experienced it. The use of imaginal power can change circumstances, but it is all temporary, “– and will vanish like smoke,” he asserted with another sweep of his hand. “Oh. – you can use it to make a fortune, to become known in the world – all these things are done – but your true purpose here is to fulfill Scripture,” so he subordinated it and became as eager to hear accounts by those who had experienced The Promise, and sharing such accounts, as he had of those with The Law.

In the last years of his life he said, “I know my time is short. I have finished the work I have been sent to do and I am now eager to depart. I know I will not appear in this three-dimensional world again for The Promise has been fulfilled in me. As for where I go, I will know you there as I have known you here, for we are all brothers, infinitely in love with each other.”

This discovery Neville called God’s “Promise.” There is nothing any person can do to earn it. It is sheer Grace and comes in its own good time.

If you do not experience it in this life, then what?

“You pass through a door — that’s all that death is,” Neville said, “and — you are restored to life instantly in a world like this — just this world,” he was fond of saying to his audiences with a sweep of his hand, “and you go on there with the same problems you had here with no loss of identity – not old, not blind, not crippled, if you depart this life that way, but young. They grow, and they marry, and they die there, too, with all the fear of death that we have here. And if they die there without experiencing The Promise, they are restored to life again and again in a place best suited to the work yet to be done on them. And it continues until ‘Christ be formed in you’ and as ‘sons of The Resurrection’ you leave this world of death never to enter it gain.”

“You are born once through the womb of woman, once from above,” Neville insists you don’t go through any womb again.

What about the fear many have of eternal hell and damnation? In response to this often asked question, Neville replied with a quote from Scriptures, “’Not one shall be lost in all my holy mountain.’ You are God and how could God eternally condemn Himself?”

Until we awaken and make this discovery, we are privileged to use a Law, given by God, to “cushion the blows of life.” The Law, stated succinctly is this, In Neville’s words: “Imagining creates reality,”

Neville spoke without notes and followed his lectures with questions and answers. When he was asked if he had tapes of his lectures for sale, he replied, “I have no tapes. Others here are making tapes for their own use, Perfectly all right. But I have no tapes.”

There are many tapes of his lectures In Los Angeles and San Francisco circulating, thanks to the loyalty and dedication of many of Neville’s students and friends who have preserved much of What he said. His books are also in print.

Neville departed from the Earth plane on October 1, 1972, in Los Angeles.

Although Neville’s career peaked in the late 1950’s and early 60’s, his message continues to find a place in the hearts of spiritual readers throughout the world today.

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HOW TO USE YOUR IMAGINATION

December 22, 2013

by Wisdom Master with One Comment Imagination Neville Goddard neville goddard feeling is the secret neville goddard law and promise neville goddard law of assumption neville goddard lectures neville goddard power of awareness neville goddard power of imagination neville goddard quotes neville goddard wisdom

Neville Goddard 1955

The purpose of this record is to show you how to use your imagination to achieve your every desire. Most men are totally unaware of the creative power of imagination and invariably bow before the dictates of “facts” and accepts life on the basis of the world without. But when you discover this creative power within yourself, you will boldly assert the supremacy of imagination and put all things in subjection to it. When a man speaks of God-in-man, he is totally unaware that this power called God-in-man is man’s imagination. THIS is the creative power in man. There is nothing under heaven that is not plastic as potter’s clay to the touch of the shaping spirit of imagination.

Once a man said to me, “You know, Neville, I love to listen to you talk about imagination, but as I do so, I invariably touch the chair with my fingers and push my feet into the rug just to keep my sense of the reality and the profundity of things. Well, undoubtedly he is still touching the chair with his fingers and pushing his feet into the rug.

Well, let me tell you of another one who didn’t touch with her fingers and didn’t push that foot of hers onto the board of the streetcar. It’s the story of a young girl just turned seventeen. It was Christmas Eve, and she is sad of heart, for that year she had lost her father in an accident, and she is returning home to what seemed to be an empty house. She was untrained to do anything, so got herself a job as a waitress. This night it’s quite late, Christmas Eve, it’s raining, the car is full of laughing boys and girls home for their Christmas vacation, and she couldn’t conceal the tears.

Luckily for her, as I said, it was raining, so she stuck her face into the heavens to mingle her tears with rain. And then holding the rail of the streetcar, this is what she did: she said, “This is not rain, why, this is spray from the ocean; and this is not the salt of tears that I taste, for this is the salt of the sea in the wind; and this is not San Diego, this is a ship, and I am coming into the Bay of Samoa.” And there she felt the reality of all that she had imagined.

Then came the end of the journey and all are out.

Ten days later this girl received a letter from a firm in Chicago saying that her aunt, several years before when she sailed for Europe, deposited with them three thousand dollars with instructions that if she did not return to America, this money should be paid to her niece. They had just received information of the aunt’s death and were now acting upon her instructions. One month later this girl sailed for Samoa. As she came into the bay it was late that night and there was salt of the sea in the wind. It wasn’t raining, but there was spray in the air. And she actually felt what she’d felt one month before, only this time she had realized her objective.

Now, this whole record is technique. I want to show you today how to put your wonderful imagination right into the feeling of your wish fulfilled and let it remain there and fall asleep in that state. And I promise you, from my own experience, you will realize the state in which you sleep – if you could actually feel yourself right into the situation of your fulfilled desire and continue therein until you fall asleep. As you feel yourself right into it, remain in it until you give it all the tones of reality, until you give it all the sensory vividness of reality. As you do it, in that state, quietly fall into sleep. And in a way you will never know – you could never consciously devise the means that would be employed – you will find yourself moving across a series of events leading you towards the objective realization of this state.

Now, here is a practical technique: The first thing you do, you must know exactly what you want in this world. When you know exactly what you want, make as life-like a representation as possible of what you would see, and what you would touch, and what you would do were you physically present and physically moving in such a state.

For example, suppose I wanted a home, but I had no money – but I still know what I want. I, without taking anything into consideration, I would make as life-like a representation of the home that I would like, with all the things in it that I would want. And then, this night, as I would go to bed, I would in a state, a drowsy, sleepy state, the state that borders upon sleep, I would imagine that I am actually in such a house, that were I to step off the bed, I would step upon the floor of that house, were I to leave this room, I would enter the room that is adjacent to my imagined room in that house. And while I am touching the furniture and feeling it to be solidly real, and while I am moving from one room to the other in my imaginary house, I would go to sound asleep in that state. And I know that in a way I could not consciously devise, I would realize my house. I have seen it work time and time again.

If I wanted promotion in my business I would ask myself, “What additional responsibilities would be mine were I to be given this great promotion? What would I do? What would I say? What would I see? How would I act? And then in my imagination I would begin to see and touch and do and act as I would outwardly see and touch and act were I in that position.

If I now desired the mate of my life, were I now in search of some wonderful girl or some wonderful man, what would I actually find myself doing that would imply that I have found my state? For instance, suppose now I was a lady, one thing I would definitely do, I would wear a wedding ring. I would take my imaginary hands and I would feel the ring that I would imagine to be there. And I would keep on feeling it and feeling it until it seemed to me to be solidly real. I would give it all the sensory vividness I am capable of giving anything. And while I am feeling my imaginary ring – which implies that I am married – I would sleep.

This story is told us in The Song of Songs, or A Song of Solomon:

It is said, “At night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. I found him whom my soul loveth, and I would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house, right into the chamber of her that conceived me.” If I would take that beautiful poem and put it into modern English, into practical language, it would be this: “While sitting in my chair I would feel myself right into the situation of my fulfilled desire, and having felt myself into that state I would not let it go. I would keep that mood alive, and in that mood I would sleep.” That is taking it “right into my mother’s chamber, into the chamber of her that conceived me.”

You know, people are totally unaware of this fantastic power of the imagination, but when man begins to discover this power within him, he never plays the part that he formerly played. He doesn’t turn back and become just a reflector of life; from here on in he is the affector of life. The secret of it is to center your imagination in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and remain therein. For in our capacity to live IN the feeling of the wish fulfilled lies our capacity to live the more abundant life. Most of us are afraid to imagine ourselves as important and noble individuals secure in our contribution to the world just because, at the very moment that we start our assumption, reason and our senses deny the truth of our assumption. We seem to be in the grip of an unconscious urge which makes us cling desperately to the world of familiar things and resist all that threatens to tear us away from our familiar and seemingly safe moorings.

Well, I appeal to you to try it. If you try it, you will discover this great wisdom of the ancients. For they told it to us in their own strange, wonderful, symbolical form. But unfortunately you and I misinterpreted their stories and took it for history, when they intended it as instruction to simply achieve our every objective. You see, imagination puts us inwardly in touch with the world of states. These states are existent, they are present now, but they are mere possibilities while we think OF them. But they become overpoweringly real when we think FROM them and dwell IN them.

You know, there is a wide difference between thinking OF what you want in this world and thinking FROM what you want. Let me tell you when I first heard of this strange and wonderful power of the imagination. It was in 1933 in New York City. An old friend of mine taught it to me.

He turned to the fourteenth of John, and this is what he read: “In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” He explained to me that this central character of the Gospels was human imagination; that ‘mansion’ was not a place in some heavenly house, but simply my desire. If I would make a living representation of the state desired and then enter that state and abide in that state, I would realize it.

At the time I wanted to make a trip to the island of Barbados in the West Indies, but I had no money. He explained to me that if I would that night, as I slept in New York City, assume that I was sleeping in my earthly father’s house in Barbados and go sound asleep in that state, that I would realize my trip. Well, I took him at his word and tried it. For one month, night after night as I fell asleep I assumed I was sleeping in my father’s home in Barbados. At the end of my month an invitation from my family came inviting me to spend the winter in Barbados. I sailed for Barbados the early part of December of that year.

From then on I knew I had found this savior in myself. The old man told me that it would never fail. Even after it happened I could hardly believe that it would not have happened anyway. That’s how strange this whole thing is. On reflection, it happens so naturally you begin to feel or to tell yourself, “Well, it would have happened anyway,” and you quickly recover from this wonderful experience of yours.

It never failed me if I would give the mood, the imagined mood, sensory vividness. I could tell you unnumbered case histories to show you how it works, but in essence it is simple: You simply know what you want. When you know what you want, you are thinking of it. That is not enough. You must now begin to think FROM it. Well, how could I think from it? I am sitting here, and I desire to be elsewhere. How could I, while sitting here physically, put myself in imagination at a point in space removed from this room and make that real to me?

Quite easily. My imagination puts me in touch inwardly with that state. I imagine that I am actually where I desire to be. How can I tell that I am there? There is one way to prove that I am there, for what a man sees when he describes his world is, as he describes it, relative to himself. So what the world looks like depends entirely upon where I stand when I make my observation. So, if as I describe my world it is related to that point in space I imagine that I am occupying, then I must be there. I am not there physically, no, but I AM there in my imagination, and my imagination is my real self! And where I go in imagination and make it real, there I shall go in the flesh, also. When in that state I fall asleep, it is done. I have never seen it fail. So this is the simple technique upon how to use your imagination to realize your every objective.

Here is a very healthy and productive exercise for the imagination, something that you should do daily: Daily relive the day as you wish you had lived it, revising the scenes to make them conform to your ideals. For instance, suppose today’s mail brought disappointing news. Revise the letter. Mentally rewrite it and make it conform to the news you wish you had received. Or, suppose you didn’t get the letter you wish you had received. Write yourself the letter and imagine that you received such a letter.

Let me tell you a story that took place in New York not very long ago. In my audience sat this lady who had heard me, oh, numerous times, and I was telling the story of revision – that man, not knowing the power of imagination, he goes to sleep at the end of his day, tired and exhausted, accepting as final all the events of the day. And I was trying to show that man should, at that moment before he sleeps, he should rewrite the entire day and make it conform to the day he wished he had experienced.

Here is the way a lady wisely used this law of revision: It appears that two years ago she was ordered out of her daughter-in-law’s home. For two years there was no correspondence. She had sent her grandson at least two dozen presents in that interval, but not one was ever acknowledged. Having heard the story of revision, this is what she did: As she retired at night, she mentally constructed two letters, one she imagined coming from her grandson, and the other from her daughter-in-law. In these letters they expressed deep affection for her and wondered why she had not called to see them.

This she did for seven consecutive nights, holding in her imaginary hand the letter she imagined she had received and reading these letters over and over until it aroused within her the satisfaction of having heard. Then she slept. On the eighth day she received a letter from her daughter-in-law. On the inside there were two letters, one from her grandson and one from the daughter-in-law. They practically duplicated the imaginary letters that this grandmother had written to herself eight days before.

This art of revision can be used in any department of your life. Take the matter of health. Suppose you were ill. Bring before your mind’s eye the image of a friend. Put upon that face an expression which implies that he or she sees in you that which you want the whole world to see. Just imagine he is saying to you that he has never seen you look better, and you reply, “I have never felt better.”

Suppose your foot was injured. Then do this: Construct mentally a drama which implies that you are walking – that you are doing all the things that you would do if the foot was normal, and do it over and over and over until it takes on the tones of reality. Whenever you do in your imagination that which you would like to do in the outer world, that you WILL do in the outer world.

The one requisite is to arouse your attention in a way, and to such intensity, that you become wholly absorbed in the revised action. You will experience an expansion and refinement of the senses by this imaginative exercise and, eventually, achieve vision in the inner world. The abundant life promised us is ours to enjoy now, but not until we have the sense of the creator as our imagination can we experience it.

Persistent imagination, centered in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is the secret of all successful operations. This alone is the means of fulfilling the intention.

Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious, voluntary exercise of the imagination. Then you will understand why all poets have stressed the importance of controlled, vivid imagination.

Listen to this one by the great William Blake:

“In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth,

And all you behold, though it appears without,

It is within, in your imagination,

Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”

Try it, and you too will prove that your Imagination is the Creator.

MENTAL DIETS

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 1955

Talking to oneself is a habit everyone indulges in. We could no more stop talking to ourselves than we could stop eating and drinking. All that we can do is control the nature and the direction of our inner conversations. Most of us are totally unaware of the fact that our inner conversations are the causes of the circumstance of our life.

We are told that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” But do we know that man’s thinking follows the tracks laid down in his own inner conversations? To turn the tracks to which he is tied in the direction in which he wants to go, he must put off his former conversation, which is called in the Bible the Old Man, and be renewed in the spirit of his mind. Speech is the image of mind; therefore, to change his mind, he must first change his speech. By ‘speech’ is meant those mental conversations we carry on with ourselves.

The world is a magic circle of infinite possible mental transformations. For there are an infinite number of possible mental conversations. When man discovers the creative power of inner talking, he will realize his function and his mission in life. Then he can act to a purpose. Without such knowledge, he acts unconsciously. Everything is a manifestation of the mental conversations which go on in us without our being aware of them. But as civilized beings, we must become aware of them and act with a purpose.

A man’s mental conversations attracts his life. As long as there is no change in his inner talking, the personal history of the man remains the same. To attempt to change the world before we change our inner talking is to struggle against the very nature of things. Man can go round and round in the same circle of disappointments and misfortunes, not seeing them as caused by his own negative inner talking, but as caused by others.

This may seem far-fetched, but it is a matter which lends itself to research and experiment. The formula the chemist illustrates is not more certainly provable than the formula of this science by which words are clothed in objective reality.

One day a girl told me of her difficulties in working with her employer. She was convinced that he unjustly criticized and rejected her very best efforts. Upon hearing her story, I explained that if she thought him unfair, it was a suresign that she herself was in need of a new conversation piece. There was no doubt but that she was mentally arguing with her employer, for others only echo that which we whisper to them in secret.

She confessed that she argued mentally with him all day long. When she realized what she had been doing, she agreed to change her inner conversations with her employer. She imagined that he had congratulated her on her fine work, and that she in turn had thanked him for his praise and kindness. To her great delight, she soon discovered that her own attitude was the cause of all that befell her. The behavior of her employer reversed itself. It echoed, as it had always done, her mental conversations with him.

I rarely see a person alone without wondering, “to what conversation piece is he tied? On what mysterious track is he walking?” We must begin to take life consciously. For the solution of all problems lies just in this: the Second Man, the Lord from heaven in all of us, is trying to become self-conscious in the body, that he may be about his father’s business. What are his labors? To imitate his father, to become master of the Word, master of his inner talking, that he may mold this world of ours into a likeness with the Kingdom of Love.

The prophet said, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” How would I imitate God? Well, we are told that God calls things that are not seen as though they were seen, and the unseen becomes seen. This is the way the girl called forth praise and kindness from her employer. She carried on an imaginary conversation with her employer from the premise that he had praised her work, and he did.

Our inner conversations represent in various ways the world we live in. Our individual worlds are self-revelations of our own inner speech. We are told that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof. For by their words they shall be justified, and by their words they shall be condemned.

We abandon ourselves to negative inner talking, yet expect to retain command of life. Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past as man believes. They advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested words. “My Word,” said the prophet, “shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in all the things whereto I sent it.”

How would I send my Word to help a friend? I would imagine that I am hearing his voice, that he is physically present, that my hand is on him. I would then congratulate him on his good fortune, tell him that I have never seen him look better. I would listen as though I heard him; I would imagine that he is telling me he has never felt better, he has never been happier. And I would know that in this loving, knowing communion with another, a communion populous with loving thoughts and feelings, that my word was sent, and it shall not return unto me void, but it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

“Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” It is only what is done now that counts, even though its effects may not be visible until tomorrow. We call, not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention; to listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create. The events and relationships of life are your Word made visible. Most of us rob others of their willingness and their ability to be kind and generous by our fixed attitudes towards them.

Our attitudes unfold within us in the form of mental conversations. Inner talking from premises of fulfilled desire is the way to consciously create circumstances.

Our inner conversations are perpetually out-pictured all around us in happenings. Therefore, what we desire to see and hear without we must see and hear within, for the whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of the Word.

If you practice this art of controlled inner speaking, you too will know what a thrill it is to be able to say, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” You will be able to consciously use your imagination to transform and channel the immense creative energies of your inner speech from the mental, emotional level to the physical level. And I do not know what limits, if any, there are to such a process.

What is your aim? Does your inner talking match it? It must, you know, if you would realize your aim. For as the prophet asked, “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” And of course the answer is, “No, they cannot.” The two who must agree are your inner conversation and the state desired. That is, what you desire to see and hear without, you must see and hear within.

Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious exercise of his imagination matching his inner speech to his fulfilled desire. As we control our inner talking, matching it to our fulfilled desires, we can lay aside all other processes. Then we simply act by clear imagination and intention: we imagine the wish fulfilled and carry on mental conversations from that premise. The right inner speech is the speech that would be yours were you to realize your ideal. In other words, it is the speech of fulfilled desire.

Now you will understand how wise the ancient was when he told us in the Hermetica, “There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone and on no other mortal creature. These two are Mind and Speech, and the gift of Mind and Speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the Immortals. And when he quits his body, Mind and Speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss.”

With the gift of Mind and Speech you create the conditions and circumstances of life. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word, said Hermes, is Son, and Mind is Father of the Word. They are not separate one from the other, for life is the union of Word and Mind. You and your inner talking, or Word, are one. If your mind is one with your inner conversations, then to be transformed in mind is to be transformed in conversation.

It was a flash of the deepest insight that taught Paul to write:

“Put off the former conversation, the Old Man which is corrupt, and be renewed

in the spirit of your mind. Put on the New Man.” “Put on the New Man,” and “be

renewed in the spirit of your mind,” is to change your inner conversation, for

speech and mind are one – a change of speech is a change of mind.

The prophet Samuel said, “The Lord spake by me, and his Word was in my tongue.” If the Lord’s Word was in the prophet’s tongue, then the Lord’s mouth that uttered the Word must be the prophet’s mind, for inner conversations originate in the mind and produce little tiny speech movements in the tongue. The prophet is telling us that the mouth of God is the mind of man, that our inner conversations are the Word of God creating life about us as we create it within ourselves.

In the Bible you are told that the Word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

“See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life.”

The conditions and circumstances of life are not created by some power external to yourself; they are the conditions which result from the exercise of your freedom of choice, your freedom to choose the ideas to which you will respond.

Now is the accepted time. This is the day of salvation. Whatsoever things are of good report, think on these things. For your future will be formed by the Word of God which is your present inner talking. You create your future by your inner conversations. The worlds were framed by the Word of God, that is, your inner talking.

See yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn. The silence and the darkness knew! So is a man’s fate born. (The Light of Asia)

For ends run true to origins. If you would reap success, you must plant success. The idea in your mind which starts the whole process going is the idea which you accept as truth. This is a very important point to grasp, for truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon “facts.” When the girl imagined that her employer was unfair, his behavior confirmed her imagination. When she changed her assumption of him, his behavior reflected the change, proving that an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.

The mind always behaves according to the assumption with which it starts. Therefore, to experience success, we must assume that we are successful. We must live wholly on the level of the imagination itself, and it must be consciously and deliberately undertaken. It does not matter if at the present moment external facts deny the truth of your assumption, if you persist in your assumption it will become a fact.

Signs follow, they do not precede.

To assume a new concept of yourself is to that extent to change your inner talking or Word of God and is, therefore, putting on the New Man. Our inner talking, though unheard by others, is more productive of future conditions than all the audible promises and threats of men. Your ideal is waiting to be incarnated, but unless you yourself offer it human parentage it is incapable of birth. You must define the person you wish to be and then assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled in faith that that assumption will find expression through you.

The true test of religion is in its use, but men have made it a thing to defend. It is to you that the words are spoken, “Blessed is she that believed, for there shall be an accomplishment of those things which were spoken unto her from the Lord.”

Test it. Try it. Conceive yourself to be one that you want to be and remain faithful to that conception, for life here is only a training ground for image making. Try it and see if life will not shape itself on the model of your imagination.

Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man’s inner talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking, are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world.

The transformation of self requires that we meditate on a given phrase, a phrase which implies that our ideal is realized, and inwardly affirm it over and over and over again until we are inwardly affected by its implication, until we are possessed by it. Hold fast to your noble inner convictions or “conversations.”

Nothing can take them from you but yourself. Nothing can stop them from becoming objective facts. All things are generated out of your imagination by the Word of God, which is your own inner conversation. And every imagination reaps its own Words which it has inwardly spoken.

The great secret of success is a controlled inner conversation from premises of fulfilled desire. The only price you pay for success is the giving up of your former conversation which belongs to the Old Man, the unsuccessful man. The time is ripe for many of us to take conscious charge in creating heaven on earth. To consciously and voluntarily use our imagination, to inwardly hear and only say that which is in harmony with our ideal, is actively bringing heaven to earth.

Every time we exercise our imagination lovingly on behalf of another, we are literally mediating God to that one. Always use your imagination masterfully, as a participant, not an onlooker. In using your imagination to transform energy from the mental, emotional level to physical level, extend your senses – look and imagine that you are seeing what you want to see, that you are hearing what you want to hear, and touching what you want to touch. Become intensely aware of doing so. Give your imaginary state all the tones and feeling of reality. Keep on doing so until you arouse within yourself the mood of accomplishment and the feeling of relief.

This is the active, voluntary use of the imagination as distinguished from the passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. It is by this active, voluntary use of the imagination that the Second Man, the Lord from heaven, is awakened in man.

Men call imagination a plaything, the “dream faculty.” But actually it is the very gateway of reality.

Imagination is the way to the state desired, it is the truth of the state desired, and the life of that state desired. Could you realize this fully, then would you know that what you do in your imagination is the only important thing. Within the circle of our imagination the whole drama of life is being enacted over and over again. Through the bold and active use of the imagination we can stretch out our hand and touch a friend ten thousand miles away and bring health and wealth to the parched lips of his being. It is the way to everything in the world. How else could we function beyond our fleshly limitations? But imagination demands of us a fuller living of our dreams in the present.

Through the portals of the present the whole of time must pass. Imagine elsewhere as here, and then as now. Try it and see. You can always tell if you have succeeded in making the future dream a present fact by observing your inner talking. If you are inwardly saying what you would audibly say were you physically present and physically moving about in that place, then you have succeeded. And you could prophesy it from these inner conversations, and from the moods which they awaken within you, what your future will be.

For one power alone makes a prophet – ‘imagination’, the divine vision. All that we meet is our Word made visible. And what we do not now comprehend is related by affinity to the unrecognized forces of our own inner conversations and the moods which they arouse within us.

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world.

Let love’s lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e’er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say,

“What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word?”

CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ONLY REALITY

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard Lesson 1

This is going to be a very practical Course. Therefore, I hope that everyone in this class has a very clear picture of what he desires, for I am convinced that you can realize your desires by the technique you will receive here this week in these five lessons.

That you may receive the full benefit of these instructions, let me state now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons who ever existed or to any event that ever occurred upon earth.

The ancient story tellers were not writing history but an allegorical picture lesson of certain basic principles which they clothed in the garb of history, and they adapted these stories to the limited capacity of a most uncritical and credulous people.

Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personifications for persons, allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended.

The difference between the form of the Bible and its substance is as great as the difference between a grain of corn and the life germ within that grain. As our assimilative organs discriminate between food that can be built into our system and food that must be discarded, so do our awakened intuitive faculties discover beneath allegory and parable, the psychological life-germ of the Bible; and, feeding on this, we, too, cast off the form which conveyed the message.

The argument against the historicity of the Bible is too lengthy; consequently, it is not suitable for inclusion in this practical psychological interpretation of its stories. Therefore, I will waste no time in trying to convince you that the Bible is not an historical fact.

Tonight I will take four stories and show you what the ancient story-tellers intended that you and I should see in these stories. The ancient teachers attached psychological truths to

phallic and solar allegories. They did not know as much of the physical structure of man as do modern scientists, neither did they know as much about the heavens as do our modern astronomers. But the little they did know they used wisely and they built phallic and solar frames to which they tied the great psychological truths that they had discovered.

In the Old Testament you will find much of the Phallic worship. Because it is not helpful, I am not going to emphasize it. I shall only show you how to interpret it.

Before we come to the first of the psychological dramas that you and I may use in a practical sense, let me state the two outstanding names of the Bible: the one you and I translate as GOD or JEHOVAH, and the one we call his son, which we have as JESUS.

The ancients spelled these names by using little symbols. The ancient tongue, called the Hebraic language, was not a tongue that you exploded with the breath. It was a mystical language never uttered by man. Those who understood it, understood it as rnathematicians understand symbols of higher mathematics. It is not something people used to convey thought as I now use the English language.

They said that God’s name was spelled, JOD HE VAU HE. I shall take these symbols and in our normal, down to earth language, explain them in this manner.

The first letter, JOD in the name GOD is a hand or a seed, not just a hand, but the hand of the director. If there is one organ of man that discriminates and sets him apart from the entire world of creation it is his hand. What we call a hand in the anthropoid ape is not a hand. It is used only for the purpose of conveying food to the mouth, or to swing from branch to branch. Man’s hand fashions, it molds. You cannot really express yourself without the hand. This is the builder’s hand, the hand of the director; it directs, and molds, and builds within your world.

The ancient story-tellers called the first letter JOD, the hand, or the absolute seed out of which the whole of creation will come.

To the second letter, HE, they gave the symbol of a window. A window is an eye — the window is to the house what the eye is to the body.

The third letter, VAU, they called a nail. A nail is used for the purpose of binding things together. The conjunction “and” in the Hebraic tongue is simply the third letter, or VAU. If I want to say ‘man and woman’, I put the VAU in the middle, it binds them together.

The fourth and last letter, HE, is another window or eye.

In this modern, down to earth language of ours, you can forget eyes and windows and hands and look at it in this manner. You are seated here now. This first letter, JOD, is your I AMness, your awareness. You are aware of being aware — that is the first letter. Out of this awareness all states of awareness come.

The second letter, HE, called an eye, is your imagination, your ability to perceive. You imagine or perceive something which seems to be other than Self. As though you were lost in reverie and contemplated mental states in a detached manner, making the thinker and his thoughts separate entities.

The third letter, VAU, is your ability to feel you are that which you desire to be. As you feel you are it, you become aware of being it. To walk as though you were what you want to be is to take your desire out of the imaginary world and put the VAU upon it. You have completed the drama of creation. I am aware of something. Then I become aware of actually being that of which I was aware.

The fourth and last letter in the name of God is another HE, another eye, meaning the visible objective world which constantly bears witness of that which I am conscious of being. You do nothing about the objective world; it always molds itself in harmony with that which you are conscious of being

You are told this is the name by which all things are made, and without it there is nothing made that is made. The name is simply what you have now as you are seated here. You are conscious of being, aren’t you? Certainly you are. You are also conscious of something that is other than yourself: the room, the furniture, the people.

You may become selective now. Maybe you do not want to be other than what you are, or to own what you see. But you have the capacity to feel what it would be like were you now other than what you are. As you assume that you are that which you
want to be, you have completed the name of God or the JOD HE VAU HE. The final result, the objectification of your assumption, is not your concern. It will come into View automatically as you assume the consciousness of being it.

Now let us turn to the Son’s name, for he gives the Son dominion over the world. You are that Son, you are the great Joshua, or Jesus, of the Bible. You know the name Joshua or Jehoshua we have Anglicized as Jesus.

The Son’s name is almost like the Father’s name. The first three letters of the Father’s name are the first three letters of the Son’s name, JOD HE VAU, then you add a SHIN and an AYIN, making the Son’s name read, JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN’.

You have heard what the first three are: JOD HE VAU. JOD means that you are aware; HE means that you are aware of something; and VAU means that you became aware of being that of which you were aware. You have dominion because you have the ability to conceive and to become that which you conceive. That is the power of creation.

But why is a SHIN put in the name of the Son? Because of the infinite mercy of our Father. Mind you, the Father and the Son are one. But when the Father becomes conscious of being man he puts within the condition called man that which he did not give unto himself. He puts a SHIN for this purpose; a SHIN is symbolized as a tooth.

A tooth is that which consumes, that which devours. I must have within me the power to consume that which I now dislike. I, in my ignorance, brought to birth certain things I now dislike and would like to leave behind me. Were there not within me the flames that would consume it, I would be condemned forever to live in a world of all my mistakes. But there is a SHIN, or flame, within the name of the Son, which allows that Son to become detached from states He formerly expressed within the world. Man is incapable of seeing other than the contents of his own consciousness.

If I now become detached in consciousness from this room by turning my attention away from it, then, I am no longer conscious of it. There is something in me that devours it within me. It can only live within my objective world if I keep it alive within my consciousness.

It is the SHIN, or a tooth, in the Son’s name that gives him absolute dominion. Why could it not have been in the Father’s name? For this simple reason: Nothing can cease to be in the Father. Even the unlovely things cannot cease to be. If I once give it expression, forever and ever it remains locked within the dimensionally greater Self which is the Father. But I would not like to keep alive within my world all of my mistakes. So I, in my infinite mercy gave to myself, when I became man, the power to become detached from these things that I, in my ignorance, brought to birth in my world..

These are the two names which give you dominion. You have dominion if, as you walk the earth, you know that your consciousness is God, the one and only reality. You become aware of something you would like to express or possess. You have the ability to feel that you are and possess that which but a moment before was imaginary. The final result, the embodying of your assumption, is completely outside of the offices of a three-dimensional mind. It comes to birth in a way that no man knows.

If these two names are clear in your mind’s eye, you will see that they are your eternal names. As you sit here, you are this JOD HE VAU HE; you are the JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN.

The stories of the Bible concern themselves exclusively with the power of imagination. They are really dramatizations of the technique of prayer, for prayer is the secret of changing the future. The Bible reveals the key by which man enters a dimensionally larger world for the purpose of changing the conditions of the lesser world in which he lives.

A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer, which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, man is the spring of action, the directing mind, and the one who grants the prayer.

The stories of the Bible contain a powerful challenge to the thinking capacity of man. The underlying truth — that they are psychological dramas and not historical facts — demands reiteration, inasmuch as it is the only justification for the stories. With a little imagination we may easily trace the psychological sense in all the stories of the Bible.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” Gen. 1:26, 27.

Here in the first chapter of the Bible the ancient teachers laid the foundation that God and man are one, and that man has dominion over all the earth. If God and man are one, then God can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation.

The question arises: What is God? God is man’s consciousness, his awareness, his I AMness. The drama of life is a psychological one in which we bring circumstances to pass by our attitudes rather than by our acts. The corner-stone on which all things are based is mans concept of himself. He acts as he does, and has the experiences that he does, because his concept of himself is what it is, and for no other reason. Had he a different concept of himself, he would act differently and have different experiences.

Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, alters his future in harmony with his assumption, for, assumptions though false, if sustained, will harden into fact.

The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But the ancient teachers discovered that sleep, or a state akin to sleep, aided man in making his assumption. Therefore, they dramatized the first creative act of man as one in which man was in a profound sleep. This not only sets the pattern for all future creative acts, but shows us that man has but one substance that is truly his to use in creating his world and that is himself.

“And the Lord God (man) caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman.” Gen. 2: 21, 22.

Before God fashions this woman for man he brings unto Adam the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air and has Adam name them. “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”

If you will take a concordance or a Bible dictionary and look up the word thigh as used in this story you will see that it has nothing to do with the thigh. It is defined as the soft parts that are creative in a man, that hang upon the thigh of a man.

The ancient story-tellers used this phallic frame to reveal a great psychological truth. An angel is a messenger of God. You are God, as you have just discovered for your consciousness is God, and you have an idea, a message. You are wrestling with an idea, for you do not know that you are already that which you contemplate, neither do you believe you could become it. You would like to, but you do not believe you could.

Who wrestles with the angel? Jacob. And the word Jacob, by definition, means the supplanter.
You would like to transform yourself and become that which reason and your senses deny. As you wrestle with your ideal, trying to feel that you are it, this is what happens. When you actually feel that you are it, something goes out of you. You may use the words, “Who has touched me, for I perceive virtue has gone out of me? ”

You become for a moment, after a successful meditation, incapable of continuing in the act, as though it were a physical creative act. You are just as impotent after you have prayed successfully as you are after the physical creative act. When satisfaction is yours, you no longer hunger for it. If the hunger persists you did not explode the idea within you, you did not actually succeed in becoming conscious of being that which you wanted to be. There was still that thirst when you came out of the deep.

If I can feel that I am that which but a few seconds ago I knew I was not, but desired to be, then I am no longer hungry to be it. I am no longer thirsty because I feel satisfied in that state. Then something shrinks within me, not physically but in my feeling, in my consciousness, for that is the creativeness of man. He so shrinks in desire, he loses the desire to continue in this meditation. He does not halt physically, he simply has no desire to continue the meditative act.

“When you pray believe that you have received, and you shall receive.” When the physical creative act is completed, the sinew which is upon the hollow of man’s thigh shrinks, and man finds himself impotent or is halted. In like manner when a man prays successfully he believes that he is already that which he desired to be, therefore he cannot continue desiring to be that which he is already conscious of being. At the moment of satisfaction, physical and psychological, something goes out which in time bears witness to man’s creative power.

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Our next. story is in the 38th chapter of the book of Genesis. Here is a King whose name is ]udah, the first three letters of whose name also begins JOD HE VAU. Tamar is his daughter-in-law.

The word Tamar means a palm tree or the most beautiful, the most comely. She is gracious and beautiful to look on and is called a palm tree. A tall, stately palm tree blossoms even in the desert — wherever it is there is an oasis. When you see the palm tree in the desert, there will be found what you seek most in that parched land. There is nothing more desirable to a man moving across a desert than the sight of a palm tree.

In our case, to be practical, our objective is the palm tree. That is the stately, beautiful one that we seek. Whatever it is that you and I want, what we truly desire, is personified in the story as Tamar the beautiful.

We are told she dresses herself in the veils of a harlot and sits in the public place. Her father-in-law, King Judah, comes by; and he is so in love with this one who is veiled that he offers her a kid to be intimate with her.

She said, “What will you give me as a pledge that you will give me a kid? ”

Looking around he said, “What do you want me to give as a pledge? ”

She answered, “Give me your ring, give me your bracelets, and give me your staff. ”

Whereupon, he took from his hand the ring, and the bracelet, and gave them to her along with his sceptre. And he went in unto her and knew her, and she bore him a son.

That is the story; now for the interpretation. Man has one gift that is truly his to give, and that is himself. He has no other gift, as told you in the very first creative act of Adam begetting the woman out of himself. There was no other substance in the world but himself with which he could fashion the object of his desire. In like manner Judah had but one gift that was truly his to give — himself, as the ring, the bracelets and the staff symbolized, for these were the symbols of his kingship.

Man offers that which is not himself, but life demands that he give the one thing that symbolizes himself. “Give me your ring, give me your bracelet, give me your sceptre.” These make the King. When he gives them he gives of himself.

You are the great King Judah. Before you can know your Tamar and make her bear your likeness in the world, you must go in unto her and give of self. Suppose I want security. I cannot get it by knowing people who have it. I cannot get it by pulling strings. I must become conscious of being secure.

Let us say I want to be healthy. Pills will not do it. Diet or climate will not do it. I must become conscious of being healthy by assuming the feeling of being healthy.

Perhaps I want to be lifted up in this world. Merely looking at kings and presidents and noble people and living in their reflection will not make me dignified. I must become conscious of being noble and dignified and walk as though I were that which I now want to be.

When I walk in that light I give of myself to the image that haunted my mind, and in time she bears me a child; which means I objectify a world in harmony with that which I am conscious of being.

You are King Judah and you are also Tamar. When you become conscious of being that which you want to be you are Tamar. Then you crystallize your desire within the world round about you.

No matter what stories you read in the Bible, no matter how many characters these ancient story-tellers introduced into the drama, there is one thing you and I must always bear in mind — they all take place within the mind of the individual man. All the characters live in the mind of the individual man.

As you read the story, make it fit the pattern of self. Know that your consciousness is the only reality. Then know what you want to be. Then assume the feeling of being that which you want to be, and remain faithful to your assumption, living and acting on your conviction. Always make it fit that pattern.

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Our third interpretation is the story of Isaac and his two sons: Esau and Jacob. The picture is drawn of a blind man being deceived by his second son into giving him the blessing which belonged to his first son. The story stresses the point that the deception was accomplished through the sense of touch.

“And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him…. And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.” Gen. 27:21, 30.

This story can be very helpful if you will re-enact it now. Again bear in mind that all the characters of the Bible are personifications of abstract ideas and must be fulfilled in the individual man. You are the blind father and both sons.

Isaac is old and blind, and sensing the approach of death, calls his first son Esau a rough hairy boy, and sends him into the woods that he may bring in some venison.

The second son, Jacob, a smooth skin boy, overheard the request of his father. Desiring the birthright of his brother , Jacob, the smooth skinned son, slaughtered one of his father’s flock and skinned it. Then, dressed in the hairy skins of the kid he had slaughtered, he came through subtlety and betrayed his father into believing that he was Esau.

The father said, “Come close my son that I may feel you. I cannot see, but come that I may feel.” Note the stress that is placed upon feeling in this story.

He came close and the father said to him, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” And feeling this roughness, the reality of the son Esau, he pronounced the blessing and gave it to Jacob.

You are told in the story that as Isaac pronounced the blessing and Jacob had scarcely gone out from his presence, that his brother Esau came in from his hunting.

This is an important verse. Do not become distressed in our practical approach to it, for as you sit here you, too, are Isaac. This room in which you are seated is your present Esau. This is the rough or sensibly known world, known by reason of your bodily organs. All of your senses bear witness to the fact that you are here in this room. Everything tells you that you are here, but perhaps you do not want to be here.

You can apply this toward any objective. The room in which you are seated at any time — the environment in which you are placed, this is your rough or sensibly known world or son which is personified in the story as Esau. What you would like in place of what you have or are is your smooth skinned state or Jacob, the supplanter.

You do not send your visible world hunting, as so many people do, by denial. By saying it does not exist you make it all the more real. Instead, you simply remove your attention from the region of sensation which at this moment is the room round about you, and you concentrate your attention on that which you want to put in its place, that which you want to make real.

In concentrating on your objective, the secret is to bring it here. You must make elsewhere here and then now imagine that your objective is so close that you can feel it.

Suppose at this very moment I want a piano here in this room. To see a piano in my mind’s eye existing elsewhere does not do it. But to visualize it in this room as though it were here and to put my mental hand upon the piano and to feel it solidly real, is to take that subjective state personified as my second son Jacob and bring it so close that I can feel it.

Isaac is called a blind man. You are blind because you do not see your objective with your bodily organs, you cannot see it with your objective senses. You only perceive it with your mind, but you bring it so close that you can feel it as though it were solidly real now. When this is done and you lose yourself in its reality and feel it to be real, open your eyes.

When you open your eyes what happens? The room that you had shut out but a moment ago returns from the hunt. You no sooner gave the blessing — felt the imaginary state to be real — than the objective world, which seemingly was unreal, returns. It does not speak to you with words as recorded of Esau, but the very room round about you tells you by its presence that you have been self-deceived.

It tells you that when you lost yourself in contemplation, feeling that you were now what you wanted to be, feeling that you now possess what you desire to possess, that you were simply deceiving self. Look at this room. It denies that you are elsewhere.

If you know the law, you now say: “Even though your brother came through subtlety and betrayed me and took your birthright, I gave him your blessing and I cannot retract.”

In other words, you remain faithful to this subjective reality and you do not take back from it the power of birth. You gave it the right of birth and it is going to become objective within this world of yours. There is no room in this limited space of yours for two things to occupy the same space at the same time. By making the subjective real it resurrects itself within your world.

Take the idea that you want to embody, and assume that you are already it. Lose yourself in feeling this assumption is solidly real. As you give it this sense of reality, you have given it the blessing which belongs to the objective world, and you do not have to aid its birth any more than you have to aid the birth of a child or a seed you plant in the ground. The seed you plant grows unaided by a man, for it contains within itself all the power and all the plans necessary for self-expression.

You can this night re-enact the drama of Isaac blessing his second son and see what happens in the immediate future in your world. Your present environment vanishes, all the circumstances of life change and make way for the coming of that to which you have given your life. As you walk, knowing that you are what you wanted to be, you objectify it without the assistance of another.

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The fourth story for tonight is taken from the last of the books attributed to Moses. If you need proof that Moses did not write it, read the story carefully. It is found in the 34th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. Ask any priest or rabbi, ‘who is the author of this book?’, and they will tell you that Moses wrote it.

In the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy you will read of a man writing his own obituary , that is, Moses wrote this chapter. A man may sit down and write what he would like to have placed upon his tombstone, but here is a man who writes his own obituary. And then he dies and so completely rubs himself out that he defies posterity to find where he has buried himself.

“So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-poer: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” Deut. 34:5, 6,7.

You must this night — not tomorrow — learn the technique of writing your own obituary and so completely die to what you are that no man in this world can tell you where you buried the old man. If you are now ill and you become well, and I know you by reason of the fact that you are ill, where can you point and tell me you buried the sick one?

If you are impoverished and borrow from every friend you have, and then suddenly you roll in wealth, where did you bury the poor man? You so completely rub out poverty in your mind’s eye that there is nothing in this world you can point to and claim, that is where I left it. A complete transformation
of consciousness rubs out all evidence that anything other than this ever existed in the world.

The most beautiful technique for the realizing of man’s objective is given in the first verse of the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy:

“And Moses went up from the Plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan.

You read that verse and say, “So what? ” But take a concordance and look up the words. The first word, Moses, means to draw out, to rescue, to lift out, to fetch. In other words, Moses is the personification of the power in man that can draw out of man that which he seeks, for everything comes from within, not from without. You draw from within yourself that which you now want to express as something objective to yourself.

You are Moses coming out of the plains of Moab. The word Moab is a contraction of two Hebraic words, Mem and Ab, meaning mother-father. Your consciousness is the mother-father , there is no other cause in the world. Your I AMness, your awareness, is this Moab or mother-father. You are always drawing something out of it.

The next word is Nebo. In your concordance Nebo is defined as a prophecy. A prophecy is something subjective. If I say, “So-and-so will be, ” it is an image in the mind; it is not yet a fact. We must wait and either prove or disprove this prophecy.

In our language Nebo is your wish, your desire. It is called a mountain because it is something that appears difficult to ascend and is therefore seemingly impossible of realization. A mountain is something bigger than you are, it towers over you. Nebo personifies that which you want to be in contrast to that which you are.

The word Pisgah, by definition, is to contemplate. Jericho is a fragrant odor. And Gilead means the hills of witnesses. The last word is Dan the Prophet.

Now put them all together in a practical sense and see what the ancients tried to tell us. As I stand here, having discovered that my consciousness is God, and that I can by simply feeling that I am what I want to be transform myself into the likeness of that which I am assuming I am; I know now that I am all that it takes to scale this mountain.

I define my objective. I do not call it Nebo, I call it my desire. Whatever I want, that is my Nebo, that is my great mountain that I am going to scale. I now begin to contemplate it, for I shall climb to the peak of Pisgah.

I must contemplate my objective in such a manner that I get the reaction that satisfies. lf I do not get the reaction that pleases then Jericho is not seen, for Jericho is a fragrant odor. When I feel that I am what I want to be I cannot suppress the joy that comes with that feeling.

I must always contemplate my objective until I get the feeling of satisfaction personified as Jericho. Then I do nothing to make it visible in my world; for the hills of Gilead, meaning men, women, children, the whole vast world round about me, come bearing witness. They come to testify that I am what I have assumed myself to be, and am sustaining within myself. When my world conforms to my assumption the prophecy is fulfilled.

If I now know what I want to be, and assume that I am it, and walk as though I were, I become it and becoming it I so completely die to my former concept of self that I cannot point to any place in this world and say: that is where my former self is buried. I so completely died that I defy posterity to ever find where I buried my old self.

There must be someone in this room who will so completely transform himself in this world that his close immediate circle of friends will not recognize him.

For ten years I was a dancer, dancing in Broadway shows, in vaudeville, night clubs, and in Europe. There was a time in my life when I thought I could not live without certain friends in my world. I would spread a table every night after the theatre and we would all dine well. I thought I could never live without them. Now I confess I could not live with them. We have nothing in common today. When we meet we do not purposely walk on the opposite side of the street, but it is almost a cold meeting because we have nothing to discuss. I so died to that life that as I meet these people they cannot even talk of the old times.

But there are people living today who are still living in that state, getting poorer and poorer. They always like to talk about the old times. They never buried that man at all, he is very much alive within their world.

Moses was 120 years, a full, wonderful age as 120 indicates. One plus two plus zero equals three, the numerical symbol of expression. I am fully conscious of my expression. My eyes are undimmed and the natural functions of my body are not abated. I am fully conscious of being what I do not want to be.

But knowing this law by which a man transforms himself, I assume that I am what I want to be and walk in the assumption that it is done. In becoming it, the old man dies and all that was related to that former concept of self dies with it. You cannot take any part of the old man into the new man. You cannot put new wine in old bottles or new patches on old garments. You must be a new being completely.

As you assume that you are what you want to be, you do not need the assistance of another to make it so. Neither do you need the assistance of anyone to bury the old man for you. Let the dead bury the dead. Do not even look back, for no man having put his hand to the plow and then looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.

Do not ask yourself how this thing is going to be. It does not matter if your reason denies it. It does not matter if all the world round about you denies it. You do not have to bury the old. “Let the dead bury the dead.” You will so bury the past by remaining faithful to your new concept of Self that you will defy the whole vast future to find where you buried it. To this day no man in all of Israel has discovered the sepulchre of Moses.

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These are the four stories I promised you tonight. You must apply them every day of your life. Even though the chair on which you are now seated seems hard and does not lend itself to meditation you can, by imagination, make it the most comfortable chair in the world.

Let me now define the technique as I want you to employ it. I trust each one of you came here tonight with a clear picture of your desire. Do not say it is impossible. Do you want it? You do not have to use your moral code to realize it. It is altogether outside the reach of your code.

Consciousness is the one and only reality. Therefore, we must form the object of our desire out of our own consciousness.

People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things, and the suggestion to create a state akin to sleep in order to aid you in assuming that which reason and your senses
deny, is one of the simple things you might slight.

However, this simple formula for changing the future, which was discovered by the ancient teachers and given to us in the Bible, can be proved by all.

The first step in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want.

Second: construct an event which you believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire – an event which implies fulfillment of your desire – something which will have the action of Self predominant.

The third step is to immobilize the physical body and induce a state akin to sleep. Then mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, imagine all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW. You must participate in the imaginary action, not merely stand back and look on, but FEEL that you are actually performing the action, so that the imaginary sensation is real to you.

It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire, one which implies fulfillment. For example, suppose you desired promotion in office. Then being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire.

Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination to imply promotion in office, immobilize your physical body and induce a state bordering on sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you.
Put your imaginary hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the FEELING OF HAVING BEEN PROMOTED.

You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you MAKE elsewhere HERE and the future NOW. The difference between FEELING yourself in action, here and now , and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure.

The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a ladder. Then, with eyelids closed imagine that a ladder is right in front of you and FEEL YOURSELF ACTUALLY CLIMBING IT.

Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action which implies fulfillment of the desire, to condense the idea into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, your attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to your attention, and in a few seconds they will lead you hundreds of miles away from your objective in point of space and years away in point of time.

If you decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the fulfillment of your desire, then you must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should your attention wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and distinctness of reality.

The idea must be maintained in the mind without any sensible effort on your part. You must, with the minimum of effort permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Drowsiness facilitates change because it favors attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep in which you no longer are able to control the movements of your attention. But a moderate degree of drowsiness in which you are still able to direct your thoughts.

A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and drowsy state, repeat over and over again like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such as, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” as though you addressed a higher power for having given you that which you desired.

I know that when this course comes to an end on Friday many of you here will be able to tell me you have realized your objectives. Two weeks ago I left the platform and went to the door to shake hands with the audience. I am safe in saying that at least 35 out of a class of 135 told me that which they desired when they joined this class they had already realized.
This happened only two weeks ago. I did nothing to bring it to pass save to give them this technique of prayer. You need do nothing to bring it to pass – save apply this technique of prayer.

With your eyes closed and your physical body immobilized induce a state akin to sleep and enter into the action as though you were an actor playing the part. Experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now in possession of your objective. Make elsewhere HERE and then NOW. And the greater you, using a larger focus will use all means, and call them good, which tend toward the production of that which you have assumed.

You are relieved of all responsibility to make it so, because as you imagine and feel that it is so your dimensionally larger self determines the means. Do not think for one moment that some one is going to be injured in order to make it so, or that some one is going to be disappointed. It is still not your concern. I must drive this home. Too many of us, schooled in different walks of life, are so concerned about the other.

You ask, , ‘If I get what I want will it not imply injury to another?’ There are ways you know not of, so do not be concerned.

Close your eyes now because we are going to be in a long silence. Soon you will become so lost in contemplation, feeling that you are what you want to be, that you will be totally unconscious of the fact that you are in this room with others.

You will receive a shock when you open your eyes and discover we are here. It should be a shock when you open your eyes and discover that you are not actually that which, a moment before, you felt you were, or felt you possessed. Now we will go into the deep.

SILENCE PERIOD………

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I need not remind you that you are now that which you have assumed that you are. Do not discuss it with anyone, not even self. You cannot take thought as to the HOW, when you know that you ARE already.

Your three-dimensional reasoning, which is a very limited reasoning indeed should not be brought into this drama. It does not know. What you have just felt to be true is true.

Let no man tell you that you should not have it. What you feel that you have, you will have. And I promise you this much, after you have realized your objective, on reflection you will have to admit that this conscious reasoning mind of yours could never have devised the way.

You are that and have that which this very moment you appropriated. Do not discuss it. Do not look to someone for encouragement because the thing might not come. It has come. Go about your Father’s business doing everything normally and let these things happen in your world.

ASSUMPTIONS HARDEN INTO FACT

December 22, 2013

by Wisdom Master with No Comment Imagination Neville Goddard neville goddard feeling is the secret neville goddard law and promise neville goddard law of assumption neville goddard lectures neville goddard power of awareness neville goddard power of imagination neville goddard quotes neville goddard wisdom

Neville Goddard Lesson 2

This Bible of ours has nothing to do with history. Some of you may yet be inclined tonight to believe that, although we can give it a psychological interpretation, it still could be left in its present form and be interpreted literally. You cannot do it. The Bible has no reference at all to people or to events as you have been taught to believe.The sooner you begin to rub out that picture the better.

We are going to take a few stories tonight, and again I am going to remind you that you must re-enact all of these stories within your own mind.

Bear in mind that although they seem to be stories of people fully awake, the drama is really between you, the sleeping one, the deeper you, and the conscious waking you. They are personified as people, but when you come to the point of application you must remember the importance of the drowsy state.

All creation, as we told you last night, takes place in the state of sleep, or that state which is akin to sleep — the, sleepy drowsy state.

We told you last night the first man is not yet awakened. You are Adam, the first man, still in the profound sleep. The creative you is the fourth-dimensional you whose home is simply the state you enter when men call you asleep.

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Our first story for tonight is found in the Gospel of John. As you hear it unfold before you, I want you to compare it in your mind’s eye to the story you heard last night from the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible, the bock of Genesis, historians claim is the record of events which occurred on earth some 3,000 years before the events recorded in the book of John. I ask you to be rational about it and see if you do not think the same writer could have written both stories. You be the judge as to whether the same inspired man could not have told the same story and told it differently.

This is a very familiar story, the story of the trial of Jesus. In this Gospel of John it is recorded that Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, and the crowd clamored for his life, they wanted Jesus. Pilate turned to them and said:

“But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the Passover; will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.” John 18:39, 40

You are told that Pilate had no choice in the matter, he was only a judge interpreting law, and this was the law. The people had to be given that which they requested. Pilate could not release Jesus against the wishes of the crowd, and so he released Barabbas and gave unto them Jesus to be crucified.

Now bear in mind that your consciousness is God. There is no other God. And you are told that God has a son whose name is Jesus. If you will take the trouble to look up the word Barabbas in your concordance, you will see that it is a contraction of two Hebraic words: BAR, which means a daughter or son- or child, and ABBA, which means father. Barabbas is the son of the great father. And Jesus in the story is called the Saviour, the Son of the Father.

We have two sons in this story. And we have two sons in the story of Esau and Jacob. Bear in mind that Isaac was blind, and justice to be true must be blind folded. Although in this case Pilate is not physically blind, the part given to Pilate implies that he is blind because he is a judge. On all the great law buildings of the world we see the lady or the man who represents justice as being blindfolded.

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. ” John 7:24.

Here we find Pilate is playing the same part as Isaac. There are two sons. All the characters as they appear in this story can apply to your own life. You have a son that is robbing you this very moment of that which you could be.

If you came to this meeting tonight conscious of wanting something, desiring something, you walked in the company of Barabbas.

For to desire is to confess that you do not now possess what you desire, and because all things are yours, you rob yourself by living in the state of desire. My saviour is my desire. As I want something I am looking into the eyes of my saviour. But if I continue wanting it, I deny my Jesus, my saviour, for as I want I confess I am not and “except ye believe that I AM He ye die in your sins.” I cannot have and still continue to desire what I have. I may enjoy it, but I cannot continue wanting it.

Here is the story. This is the feast of the Passover. Something is going to change right now, something is going to passover. Man is incapable of passing over from one state of consciousness into another unless he releases from consciousness that which he now entertains, for it anchors him where he is.

You and I may go to physical feasts year after year as the sun enters the great sign of Aries, but it means nothing to the true mystical Passover. To keep the feast of the Passover, the psychological feast, I pass from one state of consciousness into another. I do it by releasing Barabbas, the thief and robber that robs me of that state which I could embody within my world.

The state I seek to embody is personified in the story as Jesus the Saviour . If I become what I want to be then I am saved from what I was. If I do not become it, I continue to keep locked within me a thief who robs me of being that which I could be.

These stories have no reference to any persons who lived nor to any event that ever occurred upon earth. These characters are everlasting characters in the mind of every man in the world. You and I perpetually keep alive either Barabbas or Jesus. You know at every moment of time who you are entertaining.

Do not condemn a crowd for clamoring that they should release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. It is not a crowd of people called Jews. They had nothing to do with it.

If we are wise, we too should clamor for the release of that state of mind that limits us from being what we want to be, that restricts us, that does not permit us to become the ideal that we seek and strive to attain in this world.

I am not saying that you are not tonight embodying Jesus. I only remind you, that if at this very moment you have an unfulfilled ambition, then you are entertaining that which denies the fulfillment of the ambition, and that which denies it is Barabbas.

To explain the mystical, psychological transformation known as the Passover, or the crossing over, you must now become identified with the ideal that you would serve, and you must remain faithful to the ideal. If you remain faithful to it, you not only crucify it by your faithfulness, but you resurrect it unaided by a man.

As the story goes, no man could rise early enough to roll away the stone. Unaided by a man the stone was removed, and what seemingly was dead and buried was resurrected unassisted by a man.

You walk in the consciousness of being that which you want to be, no one sees it as yet, but you do not need a man to roll away the problems and the obstacles of life in order to express that which you are conscious of being. That state has its own unique way of becoming embodied in this world, of becoming flesh that the whole world may touch it.

Now you can see the relationship between the story of Jesus and the story of Isaac and his two sons, where one transplanted the other, where one was called the Supplanter of the other. Why do you think those who compiled the sixty odd books of our Bible made Jacob the forefather of Jesus?

They took Jacob, who was called the Supplanter, and made him father of twelve, then they took Judah or praise, the fifth son and made him the forefather of Joseph, who is supposed to have fathered in some strange way this one called Jesus. Jesus must supplant Barabbas as Jacob must supplant and take the place of Esau.

Tonight you can sit right here and conduct the trial of your two sons, one of whom you want released. You can become the crowd who clamors for the release of the thief, and the judge who willingly releases Barabbas, and sentences Jesus to fill his place. He was crucified on Golgotha, the place of the skull, the seat of the imagination.

To experience the Passover or passage from the old to the new concept of self, you must release Barabbas, your present concept of self, which robs you of being that which you could be, and you must assume the new concept which you desire to express.

The best way to do this is to concentrate your attention upon the idea of identifying yourself with your ideal. Assume you are already that which you seek and your assumption, though false, if sustained, will harden into fact.

You will know when you have succeeded in releasing Barabbas, your old concept of self, and when you have successfully crucified Jesus, or fixed the new concept of self, by simply looking MENTALLY at the people you know. If you see them as you formerly saw them, you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to your world.

We always seem to others an embodiment of the ideal we inspire. Therefore, in meditation, we must imagine that others see us as they would see us were we what we desire to be.

You can release Barabbas and crucify and resurrect Jesus if you will first define your ideal. Then relax in a comfortable arm chair, induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep and experience in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you desire to be.

By this simple method of experiencing in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you the embodiment of the ideal you serve, you release Barabbas who robbed you of your greatness, and you crucify and resurrect your saviour, or the ideal you desired to express.

Now let us turn to the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Bear in mind that a garden is a properly prepared plot of ground, it is not a wasteland. You are preparing this ground called Gethsemane by coming here and studying and doing something about your mind. Spend some time daily in preparing your mind by reading good literature, listening to good music and entering into conversations that ennoble.

We are told in the Epistles, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Phil. 4:8

Continuing with our story, as told in the 18th chapter of John, Jesus is in the garden and suddenly a crowd begins to seek him. He is standing there in the dark and he says, “Whom seek ye?”

The spokesman called Judas answers and says, “We seek Jesus of Nazareth.”

A voice answers, “I am He.”

At this instant they all fall to the ground, thousands of them tumbled. That in itself should stop you right there and let you know it could not be a physical drama, because no one could be so bold in his claim that he is the one sought, that he could cause thousands who seek him to fall to the ground.

But the story tells us they all fell to the ground. Then when they regained their composure they asked the same question.

“Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.” John 18:8.

“Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.” John 13:27

Judas, who has to do it quickly, goes out and commits suicide.

Now to the drama. You are in your garden of Gethsemane or prepared mind if you can, while you are in a state akin to sleep, control your attention and not let it wander away from its purpose. If you can do that you are definitely in the garden.

Very few people can sit quietly and not enter a reverie or a state of uncontrolled thinking. When you can restrict the mental action and remain faithful to your watch, not permitting your attention to wander all over the place, but hold it without effort within a limited field of presentation to the state you are contemplating, then you are definitely this disciplined presence in the garden of Gethsemane.

The suicide of Judas is nothing more than changing your concept of yourself. When you know what you want to be you have found your Jesus or saviour. When you assume that you are what you want to be you have died to your former concept of self (Judas committed suicide) and are now living as Jesus. You can become at will detached from the world round about you, and attached to that which you want to embody within your world.

Now that you have found me, now that you have found that which would save you from what you are, let go of that which you are and all that it represents in the world. Become completely detached from it. In other words, go out and commit suicide.

You completely die to what you formerly expressed in this world, and you now completely live to that which no one saw as true of you before. You are as though you had died by your own hand, as though you had committed suicide. You took your own life by becoming detached in consciousness from what you formerly kept alive, and you begin to live to that which you have discovered in your garden. You have found your saviour.

It is not men falling, not a man betraying another, but you detaching your attention, and refocusing your attention in an entirely new direction. From this moment on you walk as though you were that which you formerly wanted to be. Remaining faithful to your new concept of yourself you die or commit suicide. No one took your life, you laid it down yourself.

You must be able to see the relation of this to the death of Moses, where he so completely died that no one could find where he was buried. You must see the relationship of the death of Judas. He is not a man who betrayed a man called Jesus.

The word Judas is praise; it is Judah, to praise, to give thanks, to explode with joy. You do not explode with joy unless you are identified with the ideal you seek and want to embody in this world. When you become identified with the state you contemplate you cannot suppress your joy. It rises like the fragrant odor described as Jericho in the Old Testament.

I am trying to show you that the ancients told the same story in all the stories of the Bible. All that they are trying to tell us is how to become that which we want to be. And they imply in every story that we do not need the assistance of another. You do not need another to become now what you really want to be.

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Now we turn to a strange story in the Old Testament; one that very few priests and rabbis will be bold enough to mention from their pulpits. Here is one who is going to receive the promise as you now receive it. His name is Jesus, only the ancients called him Joshua, Jehoshua Ben Nun, or saviour, son of the fish, the Saviour of the great deep. Nun means fish, and fish is the element of the deep, the profound ocean. Jehoshua means Jehovah saves, and Ben means the offspring or son of. So he was called the one who brought the fish age.

This story is in the 6th book of the Bible, the book of Joshua. A promise is made to Joshua as it is made to Jesus in the Anglicized form in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “All things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.” John 17:7. “And all mine are thine, and thine are mine.” John 17:10.

In the Old Testament in the book of Joshua it is said in these words: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” Joshua 1:3

It does not matter where it is; analyze the promise and see if you can accept it literally. It is not physically true but it is psychologically true. Wherever you can stand in this world mentally that you can realize.

Joshua is haunted by this promise that wherever he can place his foot (the foot is understanding), wherever the sole of his foot shall tread, that will be given unto him. He wants the most desirable state in the world, the fragrant city, the delightful state called Jericho.

He finds himself barred by the impassable walls of Jericho. He is on the outside, as you are now on the outside. You are functioning three-dimensionally and you cannot seem to reach the fourth-dimensional world where your present desire is already a concrete objective reality. You cannot seem to reach it because your senses bar you from it. Reason tells you it is impossible, all things round about you tell you it is not true.

Now you employ the services of a harlot and a spy, and her name is Rahab. The word Rahab simply means the spirit of the father. RACE means the breath or spirit, and AB the father. Hence we find that this harlot is the spirit of the father and the father is man’s awareness of being aware, man’s I AMness, man’s consciousness.

Your capacity to feel is the great spirit of the father, and that capacity is Rahab in this story. She has two professions that of a spy and that of a harlot.

The profession of a spy is this: to travel secretly, to travel so quietly that you may not be detected. There is not a single physical spy in this world who can travel so quietly that he will be altogether unseen by others. He may be very wise in concealing his ways, and he may never be truly apprehended, but at every moment of time he runs the risk of being detected.

When you are sitting quietly with your thoughts, there is no man in the world so wise that he can look at you and tell you where you are mentally dwelling.

I can stand here and place myself in London. Knowing London quite well, I can close my eyes and assume that I am actually standing in London. If I remain within this state long enough, I will be able to surround myself with the environment of London as though it were a solid concrete objective fact.

Physically I am still here, but mentally I am thousands of miles away and I have made elsewhere here. I do not go there as a spy, I mentally make elsewhere here, and then now. You cannot see me dwelling there, so you think I have just gone to sleep and that I an still here in this world, this three-dimensional world that is now San Francisco. As far as I am physically concerned, I am here but no one can tell me where I am when I enter the moment of meditation.

Rahab’s next profession was that of a harlot, which is to grant unto men what they ask of her without asking man’s right to ask. If she be an absolute harlot, as her name implies, then she possesses all and can grant all that man asks of her. She is there to serve, and not to question man’s right to seek what he seeks of her.

You have within you the capacity to appropriate a state without knowing the means that will be employed to realize that end and you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled without having any of the talents that men claim you must possess in order to do so. When you appropriate it in consciousness you have employed the spy, and because you can embody that state within yourself by actually giving it to yourself, you are the harlot, for the harlot satisfies the man who seeks her.

You can satisfy self by appropriating the feeling that you are what you want to be. And this assumption though false, that is, although reason and the senses deny it, if persisted in will harden into fact. By actually embodying that which you have assumed you are, you have the capacity to become completely satisfied. Unless it becomes a tangible, concrete reality you will not be satisfied; you will be frustrated.

You are told in this story that when Rahab went into the city to conquer it, the command given to her was to enter the heart of the city, the heart of the matter, the very center of it, and there remain until I come. Do not go from house to house, do not leave the upper room of the house into which you enter. If you leave the house and there be blood upon your head, it is upon your head. But if you do not leave the house and there be blood, it shall be upon my head.

Rahab goes into the house, rises to the upper floor, and there she remains while the walls crumble. That is, we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest. In a very veiled manner, the story tells you that when the walls crumbled and Joshua entered, the only one who was saved in the city was the spy and the harlot whose name was Rahab.

This story tells what you can do in this world. You will never lose the capacity to place yourself elsewhere and make it here. You will never lose the ability to give unto yourself what you are bold enough to appropriate as true of self. It has nothing to do with the woman who played that part.

The explanation of the crumbling of the walls is simple. You are told that he blew upon the trumpet seven times and at the seventh blast the walls crumbled and he entered victoriously into the state that he sought.

Seven is a stillness, a rest, the Sabbath. It is the state when man is completely unmoved in his conviction that the thing is. When I can assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled and go to sleep, unconcerned, undisturbed, I am at rest mentally, and am keeping the Sabbath or am blowing the trumpet seven times. And when I reach that point the walls crumble. Circumstances alter then remold themselves in harmony with my assumption. As they crumble I resurrect that which I have appropriated within. The walls, the obstacles, the problems, crumble of their own weight if I can reach the point of stillness within me.

The man Who can fix within his own mind’s eye an idea, even though the world would deny it, if he remains faithful to that idea he will see it manifested. There is all the difference in the world between holding the idea, and being held by the idea. Become so dominated by an idea that it haunts the mind as though you were it. Then, regardless of what others may say, you are walking in the direction of your fixed attitude of mind. You are walking in the direction of the idea that dominates the mind.

As we told you last night, you have but one gift that is truly yours to give, and that is yourself. There is no other gift; you must press it out of yourself by an appropriation. It is there within you now for creation is finished. There is nothing to be that is not now. There is nothing to be created for all things are already yours, they are all finished.

Although man may not be able to stand physically upon a state, he can always stand mentally upon any desired state. By standing mentally I mean that you can now, this very moment, close your eyes and visualize a place other than your present one, and assume that you are actually there. You can FEEL this to be so real that upon opening your eyes you are amazed to find that you are not physically there.

This mental journey into the desired state, with its subsequent feeling of reality, is all that is necessary to bring about its fulfillment. Your dimensionally greater Self has ways that the lesser, or three-dimensional you, know not of. Furthermore, to the greater you, all means are good which promote the fulfillment of your assumption.

Remain in the mental state defined as your objective until it has the feeling of reality , and all the forces of heaven and earth will rush to aid its embodiment. Your greater Self will influence the actions and words of all who can be used to aid the production of your fixed mental attitude.

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Now we turn to the book of Numbers and here we find a strange story. I trust that some of you have had this experience as described in the bock of Numbers. They speak of the building of a tabernacle at the command of God; that God commanded Israel to build him a place of worship.

He gave them all the specifications of the tabernacle. It had to be an elongated, movable place of worship, and it had to be covered with skin. Need you be told anything more? Isn’t that man?

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? ” I Cor. 3:16

There is no other temple. Not a temple made with hands, but a temple eternal in the heavens. This temple is elongated, and it is covered with skin, and it moves across the desert.

“And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.” Num.9:15,16

The command given to Israel was to tarry until the cloud ascended by day and the fire by night. “Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed.” Num.. 9:22

You know that you are the tabernacle, but you may wonder, what is the cloud. In meditation many of you must have seen it. In meditation, this cloud, like the sub-soil waters of an artesian well, springs spontaneously to your head and forms itself into pulsating, golden rings. Then, like a gentle river they flow from your head in a stream of living rings of gold.

In a meditative mood bordering on sleep the cloud ascends. It is in this drowsy state that you should assume that you are that which you desire to be, and that you have that which you seek, for the cloud will assume the form of your assumption and fashion a world in harmony with itself. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, and where your consciousness is placed, there you will be in the flesh also.

This golden cloud comes in meditation. There is a certain point when you are approaching sleep that it is very, very thick, very liquid, and very much alive and pulsing. It begins to ascend as you reach the drowsy, meditative state, bordering on sleep. You do not strike the tabernacle; neither do you move it until the cloud begins to ascend.

The cloud always ascends when man approaches the drowsiness of sleep. For when a man goes to sleep, whether he knows it or not, he slips from a three-dimensional world into a fourth-dimensional world and that which is ascending is the consciousness of that man in a greater focus; it is a fourth-dimensional focus.

What you now see ascending is your greater self. When that begins to ascend you enter into the actual state of feeling you are what you want to be. That is the time you lull yourself into the mood of being what you want to be, by either experiencing in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you want to be, or by repeating over and over again the phrase that implies you have already done what you want to do. A phrase such as, “Isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it wonderful,” as though some wonderful thing had happened to you.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction. ” Job 33: 15, 16

Use wisely the interval preceding sleep. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and go to sleep in this mood. At night, in a dimensionally larger world, when deep sleep falleth upon men, they see and play the parts that they will later on play on earth. And the drama is always in harmony with that which their dimensionally greater selves read and play through them. Our illusion of free will is but ignorance of the causes which make us act.

The sensation which dominates the mind of man as he falls asleep, though false, will harden into fact. Assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled as we fall asleep, is the command to this embodying process saying to our mood, “Be thou actual.” In this way we become through a natural process what we desire to be.

I can tell you dozens of personal experiences where it seemed impossible to go elsewhere, but by placing myself elsewhere mentally as I was about to go to sleep, circumstances changed quickly which compelled me to make the journey. I have done it across water by placing myself at night on my bed as though I slept where I wanted to be. As the days unfolded things began to mold themselves in harmony with that assumption and all things that must happen to compel my journey did happen. And I, in spite of myself, must make ready to go toward that place which I assumed I was in when I approached the deep of sleep.

As my cloud ascends I assume that I am now the man I want to be, or that I am already in the place where I want to visit. I sleep in that place now. Then life strikes the tabernacle, strikes my environment and reassembles my environment across seas or over land and reassembles it in the likeness of my assumption. It has nothing to do with men walking across a physical desert. The whole vast world round about you is a desert.

From the cradle to the grave you and I walk as though we walk the desert. But we have a living tabernacle wherein God dwells, and it is covered with a cloud which can and does ascend when we go to sleep or are in a state akin to sleep. Not necessarily in two days, it can ascend in two minutes. Why did they give you two days? If I now become the man I want to be, I may become dissatisfied tomorrow. I should at least give it a day before I decide to move on.

The Bible says in two days, a month, or a year: whenever you decide to move on with this tabernacle let the cloud ascend. As it ascends you start moving where the cloud is. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, your assumption. Where the consciousness is placed you do not have to take the physical body; it gravitates there in spite of you. Things happen to compel you to move in the direction where you are consciously dwelling.

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:2, 3

The many mansions are the unnumbered states within your mind, for you are the house of God. In my Father’s house are unnumbered concepts of self. You could not in eternity exhaust what you are capable of being.

If I sit quietly here and assume that I am elsewhere, I have gone and prepared a place. But if I open my eyes, the bilocation which I created vanishes and I am back here in the physical form that I left behind me as I went to prepare a place. But I prepared the place nevertheless and will in time dwell there physically.

You do not have to concern yourself with the ways and the means that will be employed to move you across space into that place where you have gone and mentally prepared it. Simply sit quietly, no matter where you are, and mentally actualize it.

But I give you warning, do not treat it lightly, for I am conscious of what it will do to people who treat it lightly. I treated it lightly once because I just wanted to get away, based only upon the temperature of the day. It was in the deep of winter in New York, and I so desired to be in the warm climate of the Indies, that I slept that night as though I slept under palm trees. Next morning when I awoke it was still very much winter.

I had no intentions of going to the Indies that year, but distressing news came which compelled me to make the journey. It was in the midst of war when ships were being sunk right and left, but I sailed out of New York on a ship 48 hours after I received this news. It was the only way I could get to Barbados, and I arrived just in time to see my mother and say a three-dimensional “Good-bye” to her .

In spite of the fact that I had no intentions of going, the deeper Self watched where the great cloud descended. I placed it in Barbados and this tabernacle (my body) had to go and make the journey to fulfill the command, “Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread that have I given unto you.” Wherever the cloud descends in the desert, there you reassemble that tabernacle.

I sailed from New York at midnight on a ship without taking thought of submarines or anything else. I had to go. Things happened in a way that I could not have devised.

I warn you, do not treat it lightly. Do not say, “I will experiment and put myself in Labrador, just to see if it will work.” You will go to your Labrador and then you will wonder why you ever came to this class. It will work if you dare assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled as you go to sleep.

Control your moods as you go to sleep. I cannot find any better way to describe this technique than to call it a “controlled waking dream.” In a dream you lose control, but try preceding your sleep with a complete controlled waking dream, entering into it as you do in dream, for in a dream you are always very dominant, you always play the part. You are always an actor in a dream, and never the audience. When you have a controlled waking dream you are an actor and you enter into the act of the
controlled dream. But do not do it lightly, for you must then reenact it physically in a three-dimensional world.

Now before we go into our moment of silence there is something I must make very clear, and that is this effort we discussed last night. If there is one reason in this whole vast world why people fail it is because they are unaware of a law known to psychologists today as the law of reverse effort.

When you assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled it is with a minimum of effort. You must control the direction of the movements of your attention. But you must do it with the least effort. If there is effort in the control, and you are compelling it in a certain way you are not going to get the results. You will get the opposite results, what ever they might be.

That is why we insist on establishing the basis of the Bible as Adam slept. That is the first creative act, and there is no record where he was ever awakened from this profound sleep. While he sleeps creation stops.

You change your future best when you are in control of your thoughts while in a state akin to sleep, for then effort is reduced to its minimum. Your attention seems to completely relax, and then you must practice holding your attention within that feeling, without using force, and without using effort.

Do not think for a moment that it is will power that does it. When you release Barabbas and become identified with Jesus, you do not will yourself to be it, you imagine that you are it. That is all you do.

Now as we come to the vital part of the evening, the interval devoted to prayer, let me again clarify the technique. Know what you want. Then construct a single event, an event which implies fulfillment of your wish. Restrict the event to a single act.

For instance, if I single out as an event, shaking a man’s hand, then that is the only thing I do. I do not shake it, then light a cigarette and do a thousand other things. I simply imagine that I am actually shaking hands and keep the act going over and over and over again until the imaginary act has all the feeling of reality.

The event must always imply fulfillment of the wish. Always construct an event which you believe you would naturally encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. You are the judge of what event you really want to realize.

There is another technique I gave you last night. If you cannot concentrate on an act, if you cannot snuggle into your chair and believe the chair is elsewhere, just as though elsewhere were here, then do this: Reduce the idea, condense it to a single, simple phrase like, “Isn’t it wonderful.” or, “Thank you.” or, “It’s done.” or, “It’s finished.”

There should not be more than three words. Something that implies the desire is already realized. “Isn’t it wonderful”, or “Thank you,” certainly imply that. These are not all the phrases you could use. Make up out of your own vocabulary the phrase which best suits you. But make it very, very short and always use a phrase that implies fulfillment of the idea.

When you have your phrase in mind, lift the cloud. Let the cloud ascend by simply inducing the state that borders on sleep. Simply begin to imagine and feel you are sleepy, and in this state assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Then repeat the phrase over and over like a lullaby. Whatever the phrase is, let it imply that the assumption is true, that it is concrete, that it is already a fact and you know it.

Just relax and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be. As you do it you are entering Jericho with your spy who has the power to give it. You are releasing Barabbas and sentencing Jesus to be crucified and resurrected. All these stories you are re-enacting if now you begin to let go and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be. Now we can go…..

SILENCE PERIOD ……..

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If your hands are dry , and if your mouth is dry at the end of this meditation, that is positive proof that you did succeed in lifting the cloud. What you were doing when the cloud was lifted is entirely your business. But you did lift the cloud if your hands are dry.

I will give you another phenomena which is very strange and one I cannot analyze. It happens if you really go into the deep. You will find on waking that you have the most active pair of kidneys in the world. I have discussed it with doctors and they cannot explain it.

Another thing you may observe in meditation is a lovely liquid blue light. The nearest thing on earth to which I can compare it is burning alcohol. You know when you put alcohol on the plum pudding at Christmas time and set it a flame, the lovely liquid blue flame that envelopes the pudding until you blow it out. That flame is the nearest thing to the blue light which comes on the forehead of a man in meditation.

Do not be distressed. You will know it when you see it. It is like two shades of blue, a darker and a lighter blue in constant motion, just like burning alcohol, which is unlike the constant flame of a gas jet. This flame is alive, just as spirit would be alive.

Another thing that may come to you as it did to me. You will see spots before your eyes. They are not liver spots as some people will tell you who know nothing about it. These are little things that float in space like a mesh, little circles all tied together. They start with a single cell and come in groups in different geometrical patterns, like worms, like trailers, and they float all over your face. When you close your eyes you still see them, proving that they are not from without, they are from within.

When you begin to expand in consciousness all these things come. They may be your blood stream objectified by some strange trick of man that man does not quite understand. I am not denying that it is your blood stream made visible, but do not be distressed by thinking it is liver spots or some other silly thing that people will tell you.

If these various phenomena come to you, do not think you are doing something wrong. It is the normal, natural expansion that comes to all men who take themselves in tow and try to develop the garden of Gethsemane.

The minute you begin to discipline your mind by observing your thoughts and watching your thoughts throughout the day, you become the policeman of your thoughts. Refuse to enter into conversations that are unlovely, refuse to listen attentively to anything that tears down.

Begin to build within your own mind’s eye the vision of the perfect virgin rather than the vision of the foolish virgin. Listen only to the things that bring joy when you hear them. Do not give a willing ear to that which is unlovely, which when you heard it you wish you had not. That is listening and seeing things Without oil in your lamp, or joy in your mind.

There are two kinds of virgins in the Bible: five foolish and five wise virgins. The minute you become the wise virgin, or try to make an attempt to do it, you will find all these things happen. You will see these things, and they interest you so that you have not time to develop the foolish sight, as many people do. I hope that no one here does. Because no one should be identified with this great work who can still find great joy in a discussion of another that is unlovely.

THINKING FOURTH-DIMENSIONALLY

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard Lesson 3

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by every man, and the ancient story tellers were fully conscious of these two outlooks. They called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.”

We recognize these two centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Cor. 2:14

To the natural mind, reality is confined to the instant called now; this very moment seems to contain the whole of reality, everything else is unreal. To the natural mind, the past and the future are purely imaginary. In other words my past, when I use the natural mind, is only a memory image of things that were. And to the limited focus of the carnal or natural mind the future does not exist. The natural-mind does not believe that it could revisit the past and see it as something that is present, something that is objective and concrete to itself, neither does it believe that the future exists.

To the Christ mind, the spiritual mind, which in our language we will call the fourth-dimensional focus, the past, the present, and the future of the natural mind are a present whole. It takes in the entire array of sensory impressions that man has encountered, is encountering, and will encounter.

The only reason you and I are functioning as we are today, and are not aware of the greater outlook, is simply because we are creatures of habit, and habit renders us totally blind to what otherwise we should see; but habit is not law. It acts as though it were the most compelling force in the world, yet it is not law.

We can create a new approach to life. If you and I would spend a few minutes every day in withdrawing our attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on an invisible state and remain faithful to this contemplation, feeling and sensing the reality of an invisible state, we would in time become aware of this greater world, this dimensionally larger world. The state contemplated is now a concrete reality, displaced in time.

Tonight as we turn to our Bible you be the judge as to where you stand in your present unfoldment.

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Our first story for tonight is from the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Mark. In this chapter there are three stories told as though they were separate experiences of the dominant characters.

In the first story we are told that Jesus came upon an insane man, a naked man who lived in the cemetery and hid himself behind the tombs. This man appealed to Jesus not to cast out the devils that bedeviled him.

But Jesus said unto him, “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” Mark 5:8.

Thus Jesus cast out the devils that they may now destroy themselves, and we find this man, for the first time, clothed and in his right mind and seated at the feet of the Master. We will get the psychological sense of this chapter by changing the name Jesus to that of enlightened reason or fourth-dimensional thinking.

As we progress in this chapter we are told that Jesus now comes upon the High Priest whose name is Jairus, and Jairus the High Priest of the Synagogue has a child who is dying. She is 12 years old, and he appeals to Jesus to come and heal the child.

Jesus consents, and as he starts toward the home of the High Priest a woman in the market place touched his garment.
“And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? ” Mark 5:30.

The woman who was healed of an issue of blood that she had had for 12 years confessed that she had touched him. ” And he said unto her, Daughter, Thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” Mark 5:34

As he continues toward the home the High Priest he is told that the child is dead and there is no need to go to resurrect her. She is no longer asleep, but is now dead.

“As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.” Mark 5:36

“And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.” Mark 5:39

With this the entire crowd mocked and laughed, but Jesus, closing the doors against the mocking crowd, took with him into the household of Jairus, his disciples and the father and mother of the dead child.

They entered into the room where the damsel was lying. “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.” Mark 5:41

“From this deep sleep she awoke and arose and walked, and the High Priest and all the others were astonished. And he changed them straightly that no man should know it; and he commanded that something should be given her to eat.” Mark 5:43

You are this very night, as you are seated here, pictured in this 5th chapter of Mark. A cemetery is for one purpose: it is simply a record of the dead. Are you living in the dead past?

If you are living among the dead, your prejudices, your superstitions, and your false beliefs that you keep alive are the tombstones behind which you hide. If you refuse to let them go you are just as mad as the mad man of the Bible who pleaded with enlightened reason not to cast them out. There is no difference. But enlightened reason is incapable of protecting prejudice and superstition against the inroads of reason.

There is not a man in this world who has a prejudice, regardless of the nature of the prejudice, who can hold it up to the light of reason. Tell me you are against a certain nation, a certain race, a certain “ism,” a certain anything — I do not care what it is — you cannot expose that belief of yours to the light of reason and have it live. In order that it may be kept alive in your world you must hide it from reason. You cannot analyze it in the light of reason and have it live. When this fourth-dimensional focus comes and shows you a new approach to life and casts out of your own mind all these things that bedeviled you, you are then cleansed and clothed in your right mind. And you sit at the foot of understanding, called the feet of the Master.

Now clothed and in your right mind you can resurrect the dead. What died? The child in the story is not a child. The child is your ambition, your desire, the unfulfilled dreams of your heart. This is the child housed within the mind of man. For as I have stated before, the entire drama of the Bible is a psychological one. The Bible has no reference at all to any person who ever existed, or any event that ever occurred upon earth. All the stories of the Bible unfold in the minds of the individual man.

In this story Jesus is the awakened intellect of man. When your mind functions outside of the range of your present senses, when your mind is healed of all the former limitations, then you are no longer the insane man; but you are this presence personified as Jesus, the power that can resurrect the longings of the heart of man.

You are now the woman with the issue of blood. What is this issue of blood? A running womb is not a productive womb. She held it for 12 years, she was incapable of conceiving. She could not give form to her longing because of the running of the issue of blood. You are told her faith closed it. As the womb closes it can give form to the seed or idea.

As your mind is cleansed of your former concept of Self, you assume you are what you want to be, and remaining faithful to this assumption, you give form to your assumption or resurrect your child. You are the woman cleansed of the issue of blood, and you move towards the house of the dead child.

The child or state you desired is now your fixed concept of yourself. But now having assumed that I am what formerly I desired to be, I cannot continue desiring what I am conscious of being. So I do not discuss it. I talk to no one concerning what I am. It is so obvious to me that I am what I wanted to be that I walk as though I were.

Walking as though I am what formerly I wanted to be, my world of limited focus does not see it and thinks I no longer desire it. The child is dead within their world; but I, who know the law, say, “The child is not dead.” The damsel is not dead, she but sleepeth. I now awaken her. I, by my assumption, awaken and make visible in my world what I assume, for assumptions if sustained invariably awaken what they affirm.

I close the door. What door? The door of my senses. I simply shut out completely all that my senses reveal. I deny the evidence of my senses. I suspend the limited reason of the natural man and walk in this bold assertion that I am what my senses deny.

With the door of my senses closed, what do I take into that disciplined state? I take no one into that state but the parents of the child and my disciples. I close the door against the mocking, laughing crowd. I no longer look for confirmation. I completely deny the evidence of my senses, which mock my assumption and do not discuss with others whether my assumption is possible or not.

Who are the parents? We have discovered that the father-mother of all creation is man’s I AMness. Man’s consciousness is God. I am conscious of the state. I am the father-mother of all my ideas and my mind remains faithful to this new concept of self. My mind is disciplined. I take into that state the disciples, and I shut out of that state everything that would deny it.

Now the child, unaided by a man, is resurrected. The condition which I desired and assumed that I had, becomes objectified within my world and bears witness to the power of my assumption.

You be the judge, I cannot judge you. You are either living now in the dead past, or you are living as the woman whose issue of blood has been stanched. Could you actually answer me if I asked you the question:

“Do you believe now that you, without the assistance of another, need only assume that you are what you want to be, to make that assumption real within your world? Or do you believe that you must first fulfill a certain condition imposed upon you by the past, that you must be of a certain order, or a certain something?’

I am not being critical of certain churches or groups, but there are those who believe that anyone outside of their church or group is not yet saved. I was born a Protestant. You talk to a Protestant, there is only one Christian, a Protestant. You talk to a Catholic, why there is nothing in the world that is a Christian but a Catholic. You talk to a Jew, and the Christians are heathens, and the Jews are the chosen. You talk to a Mohammedan, Jews and Christians are the infidels. You talk to someone else and all these are the untouchables. It does not matter to whom you talk, they are always the chosen ones.

If you believe that you must be one of these in order to be saved, you are still an insane man hiding behind these superstitions and these prejudices of the past, and you are begging not to be cleansed.

Some of you say to me, “Do not ask me to give up my belief in Jesus the man, or in Moses the man, or in Peter the man. When you ask me to give up my belief in these characters you are asking too much. Leave me these beliefs because they comfort me. I can believe that they lived upon earth and still follow your psychological interpretation of their stories.”

I say, Come out of the dead past. Come out of that cemetery and walk, knowing that you and your Father are one, and your Father, who men call GOD, is your own consciousness. That is the only creative law in the world.

Of what are you conscious of being? Although you cannot see your objective with the limited focus of your three-dimensional mind, you are now that which you have assumed you are. Walk in that assumption and remain faithful to it.

Time in this dimension of your being, beats slowly and you may not, even after you objectify your assumption, remember there was a time when this present reality was but an attitude of mind. Because of the slowness of the beat of time here you often fail to see the relationship between your inner nature and the outer world that bears witness to it.

You be the judge of the position you now occupy in this 5th chapter of Mark. Are you resurrecting the dead child? Are you still in need of having that womb of your mind closed? Is it still running and therefore cannot be fertile? Are you now the insane man living in the dead past? Only you can be the judge and answer these questions.

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Now we turn to a story in the 5th chapter of the Gospel of John. This will show you how beautifully the ancient story tellers told of the two distinct outlooks on this world- one, the limited three-dimensional focus, and the other, the fourth-dimensional focus.

This story tells of an impotent man who is quickly healed. Jesus comes to a place called Bethesda, which by definition means the House of Five Porches. On these Five Porches are unnumbered impotent folk- lame, blind, halt, withered, and others. Tradition had it that at certain seasons of the year an angel would descend and disturb the pool which was near these Five Porches. As the Angel disturbed the pool, the first one in was always healed. But only the first one, not the second.

Jesus, seeing a man who was lame from his mother’s womb, said to him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” John 5:6

“The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool – but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” John 5:7

“Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” John 5:8

“And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked, and on the same day was the Sabbath.” John 5:9

You read this story and you think some strange man who possessed miraculous power suddenly said to the lame man, “Rise and walk.” I cannot repeat too often that the story, even when it introduces numberless individualities, takes place within the mind of the individual man.

The pool is your consciousness. The angel is an idea, called the messenger of GOD. Consciousness being God, when you have an idea you are entertaining an angel. The minute you are conscious of a desire your pool has been disturbed. Desire disturbs the mind of man. To want something is to be disturbed.

The very moment you have an ambition, or a clearly defined objective, the pool has been disturbed by the angel, which was the desire. You are told that the first one into the disturbed pool is always healed.

My closest companions in this world, my wife and my little girl, are to me when I address them, second. I must speak to my wife as, “you are.” I must speak to anyone, no matter how close they are, as “You are.” And after that the third person, “He is.” There is only one person in this world with whom I can use the first person present and that is self. “I am,” can be said only of myself, it cannot be said of another.

Therefore, when I am conscious of some desire that I want to be, but seemingly am not, the pool being disturbed, who can get into that pool before me? I alone possess the power of the first person. I am that which I want to be. Except I believe I am what I want to be, I remain as I formerly was and die in that limitation.

In this story you need no man to put you into the pool as your consciousness is disturbed by desire. All you need do is to assume you are already that which formerly you wanted to be and you are in it, and no man can get in before you. What man can get in before you when you become conscious of being that which you want to be? No one can be before you when you alone possess the power to say I AM.

These are the two outlooks. You are now what your senses would deny. Are you bold enough to assume that you are already that which you want to be? If you dare assume you are already that which your reason and your senses now deny, then you are in the pool and, unaided by a man, you, too, will rise and take your couch and walk.

You are told it happened on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is only the mystical sense of stillness, when you are unconcerned, when you are not anxious, when you are not looking for results, knowing that signs follow and do not precede.

The Sabbath is the day of stillness wherein there is no working. When you are not working to make it so you are in the Sabbath. When you are not at all concerned about the opinion of others, when you walk as though you were, you cannot raise one finger to make it so, you are in the Sabbath. I cannot be concerned as to how it will be, and still say I am conscious of being it. If I am conscious of being free, secure, healthy, and happy, I sustain these states of consciousness without effort or labor on my part. Therefore, I am in the Sabbath; and because it was the Sabbath he rose and walked.

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Our next story is from the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John, and it is one you have heard time and time again. Jesus comes to the well and there is a woman called the woman of Samaria, and he said to her, “Give me to drink.” John 4:7

“Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” John 4:9

“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” John 4:10

The woman seeing that he has nothing with which to draw the water, and knowing the well is deep, says: Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?” John 4:12

“Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again- But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:13,14

Then he tells her all concerning herself and asks her to go and call her husband. She answered and said, “I have no husband.” John 4:17

“Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. ” John 4: 17, 18

The woman, knowing this to be true, goes into the market-place and tells the other, “I have met the Messiah.”

They ask her, “How do you know you have met the Messiah?”

“Because he told me all things that I have ever done.” she replies. Here is a focus that takes in the entire past at least, and tells her now concerning the future.

Continuing with the story, the disciples come to Jesus and say, “Master, eat.” John 4:31

“But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. ” John 4:32

When they speak of a harvest in four months, Jesus replies, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” John 4:35

He sees things that people wait four months for, or wait four years for; he sees them as now in a dimensionally larger world, existing now, taking place now.

Let us go back to the first part of the story. The woman of Samaria is the three-dimensional you, and Jesus at the well is the fourth-dimensional you. The argument starts between what you want to be, and what reason tells you that you are. The greater you tells you that if you would dare assume you are already what you want to be, you would become it.

The lesser you, with its limited focus, tells you, “Why you haven’t a bucket, you haven’t a rope and the well is deep. How could you ever reach the depth of this state without the means to that end?”

You answer and say, “If you only knew who asks of you to drink you would ask of him.” If you only knew what in yourself is urging upon you the embodiment of the state you now seek, you would suspend your little sight and let him do it for you.

Then he tells you that you have five husbands, and you deny it. But he knows far better than you that your five senses impregnate you morning, noon, and night with their limitations . They tell you what children you will bear tonight, tomorrow, and the days to come. For your five senses act like five husbands who constantly impregnate your consciousness, which is the great womb of GOD; and morning, noon, and night they suggest to you, and dictate to you that which you must accept as true.

He tells you the one you would like to have for your husband is not your husband. In other words the sixth has not yet impregnated you. What you would like to be is denied by these five, and they hold the power, they dictate what you will accept as true. What you would like to accept has not yet penetrated your mind and impregnated your mind with its reality. He whom you call husband is really not your husband. You are not bearing his likeness. To bear his likeness is proof that you are his wife, at least you have known him intimately. You are not bearing the likeness of the sixth; you are only bearing the likeness of the five.

Then one turns to me and tells me all that I have ever known. I go back in my mind’s eye and reason tells me that all through my life I have always accepted the limitations of my senses, I have always looked upon them as fact; and morning, noon, and night I have born witness to this acceptance.

Reason tells me I have only known these five from the time I was born. Now I would like to step outside the limitation of my senses but I have not yet found within myself the courage to assume I am what these five would deny that I am. So here I remain, conscious of my task, but without the courage to step beyond the limitations of my senses, and that which my reason denies.

He tells these, “I have meat ye know not of. I am the bread that droppeth down from heaven. I am the wine.” I know what I want to be, and because I am that bread I feast upon it. I assume that I am, and instead of feasting upon the fact that I am in this room talking to you and you are listening to me, and that I am in Los Angeles, I feast upon the fact that I am elsewhere and I walk here as though I were elsewhere. And gradually I become what I feast upon.

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Let me give you two personal stories. When I was a boy I lived in a very limited environment, in a little island called Barbados. Feed for animals was very, very scarce and very expensive because we had to import it. I am one of a family of 10 children and my grandmother lived with us making 13 at the table.

Time and again I can remember my mother saying to the cook in the early part of the week, “I want you to put away three ducks for Sunday’s dinner. “This meant that she would take from the flock in the yard three ducks and coop them up in a very small cage and feed them, stuff them morning, noon, and night with corn and all the things she wanted the ducks to feast upon.

This was an entirely different diet from what we regularly fed the ducks, because we kept those birds alive by feeding them fish. We kept them alive and fat on fish because fish were very cheap and plentiful; but you could not eat a bird that fed upon fish, not as you and I like a bird.

The cook would take three ducks, put them in a cage and for seven days stuff them with corn, sour milk and all the things we wanted to taste in the birds. Then when they were killed and served for dinner seven days later they were luscious, milk fed, corn fed birds.

But occasionally the cook forgot to put away the birds, and my father, knowing we were having ducks, and believing that she had carried out the command, did not send anything else for dinner, and three fish came to the table. You could not touch those birds for they were so much the embodiment of what they fed upon.

Man is a psychological being, a thinker. It is not what he feeds upon physically, but what he feeds upon mentally that he becomes. We become the embodiment of that which we mentally feed upon.

Now those ducks could not be fed corn in the morning and fish in the afternoon and something else at night. It had to be a complete change of diet. In our case we cannot have a little bit of meditation in the morning, curse at noon, and do something else in the evening. We have to go on a mental diet, for a week we must completely change our mental food.

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Phil. 4:8

As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. If I could now single out the kind of mental food I want to express within my world and feast upon it, I would become it.

Let me tell you why I am doing what I am doing today. It was back in 1933 in the city of New York, and my old friend Abdullah, with whom I studied Hebrew for five years, was really the beginning of the eating of all my superstitions. When I went to him I was filled with superstitions. I could not eat meat, I could not eat fish, I could not eat chicken, I could not eat any of these things that were living in the world. I did not drink, I did not smoke, and I was making a tremendous effort to live a celibate life.

Abdullah said to me, “I am not going to tell you ‘you are crazy’ Neville, but you are you know. All these things are stupid.” But I could not believe they were stupid.

In November, 1933, I bade goodbye to my parents in the city of New York as they sailed for Barbados. I had been in this country 12 years with no desire to see Barbados. I was not successful and I was ashamed to go home to successful members of my family. After 12 years in America I was a failure in my own eyes. I was in the theatre and made money one year and spent it the next month.
I was not what I would call by their standards nor by mine a successful person.

Mind you when I said goodbye to my parents in November I had no desire to go to Barbados. The ship pulled out, and as I came up the street, something possessed me with a desire to go to Barbados.

It was the year 1933, I was unemployed and had no place to go except a little room on 75th Street. I went straight to my old friend Abdullah and said to him “Ab, the strangest feeling is possessing me.
For the first time in 12 years I want to go to Barbados.”

If you want to go Neville, you have gone.” he replied.

That was very strange language to me. I am in New York City on 72nd Street and he tells me I have gone to Barbados. I said to him, “What do you mean, I have gone, Abdullah ?”

He said, “Do you really want to go? ”

I answered “yes.”

He then said to me, “As you walk through this door now you are not walking on 72nd Street, you are walking on palm lined streets, coconut lined streets; this is Barbados. Do not ask me how you are going to go. You are in Barbados. You do not say ‘how’ when you ‘are there’. You are there. Now you walk as though you were there.”

I went out of his place in a daze. I am in Barbados. I have no money, I have no job, I am not even well clothed, and yet I am in Barbados.

He was not the kind of a person with whom you would argue, not Abdullah. Two weeks later I was no nearer my goal than on the day I first told him I wanted to go to Barbados. I said to him, “Ab, I trust you implicitly but here is one time I cannot see how it is going to work. I have not one penny towards my journey, I began to explain.”

You know what he did. He was as black as the ace of spades, my old friend Abdullah, with his turbaned head. As I sat in his living room he rose from his chair and went towards his study and slammed the door, which was not an invitation to follow him. As he went through the door he said to me, “I have said all that I have to say.”

On the 3rd of December I stood before Abdullah and told him again I was no nearer my trip. He repeated his statement, “You are in Barbados.”

The very last ship sailing for Barbados that would take me there for the reason I wanted to go, which was to be there for Christmas, sailed at noon on December 6th, the old Nerissa.

On the morning of December 4th, having no job, having no place to go, I slept late. When I got up there was an air mail letter from Barbados under my door. As I opened the letter a little piece of paper flickered to the floor. I picked it up and it was a draft for $50.00.

The letter was from my brother Victor and it read, “I am not asking you to come, Neville, this is a command. We have never had a Christmas when all the members of our family were present at the same time. This Christmas it could be done if you would come. ”

My oldest brother Cecil left home before the youngest was born and then we started to move away from home at different times so never in the history of our family were we ever all together at the same time.

The letter continued, “You are not working, I know there is no reason why you cannot come, so you must be here before Christmas. The enclosed $50.00 is to buy a few shirts or a pair of shoes you may need for the trip. You will not need tips; use the bar if you are drinking. I will meet the ship and pay all your tips and your incurred expenses. I have cabled Furness, Withy & Co. in New York City and told them to issue you a ticket when you appear at their office. The $50.00 is simply to buy some little essentials. You may sign as you want aboard the ship. I will meet it and take care of all obligations.”

I went down to Furness, Withy & Co. with my letter and let them read it. They said, “We received the cable Mr. Goddard, but unfortunately we have not any space left on the December 6th sailing. The only thing available is 3rd Class between New York and St . Thomas. When we get to St. Thomas we have a few passengers who are getting off. You may then ride lst Class from St. Thomas to Barbados. But between New York and St. Thomas you must go 3rd Class, although you may have the privileges of the lst Class dining room and walk the decks of the 1st Class.”

I said, “I will take it.”

I went back to my friend Abdullah on the afternoon of December 4th and said, “It worked like a dream.” I told him what I had done, thinking he would be happy.

Do you know what he said to me? He said, “Who told you that you are going 3rd Class? Did I see you in Barbados, the man you are, going 3rd Class? You are in Barbados and you went there 1st Class.”

I did not have one moment to see him again before I sailed on the noon of December 6th. When I reached the dock with my passport and my papers to get aboard that ship the agent said to me, “We have good news for you, Mr. Goddard. There has been a cancellation and you are going 1st Class.”

Abdullah taught me the importance of remaining faithful to an idea and not compromising. I wavered, but he remained faithful to the assumption that I was in Barbados and had traveled 1st Class.

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Now back to the significance of our two Bible stories. The well is deep and you have no bucket, you have no rope. It is four months to the harvest and Jesus says, “I have meat to eat ye know not of. I am the bread of heaven. ”

Feast on the idea, become identified with the idea as though you were already that embodied state. Walk in the assumption that you are what you want to be. If you feast on that and remain faithful to that mental diet, you will crystallize it. You will become it in this world.

When I came back to New York in 1934, after three heavenly months in Barbados, I drank, I smoked, and did everything I had not done in years.

I remembered what Abdullah had said to me, “After you have proven this law you will become normal, Neville. You will come out of that graveyard, you will come out of that dead past where you think you are being holy. For all you are really doing you know, you are being so good, Neville, you are good for nothing”

I came back walking this earth a completely transformed person. From that day, which was in February 1934, I began to live more and more. I cannot honestly tell you I have always succeeded. My many mistakes in this world, my many failures would convict me if I told you that I have so completely mastered the movements of my attention that I can at all times remain faithful to the idea I want to embody.

But I can say with the ancient teacher, although I seem to have failed in the past, I move on and strive day after day to become that which I want to embody in this world. Suspend judgment, refuse to accept what reason and the senses now dictate, and if you remain faithful to the new diet, you will become the embodiment of the ideal to which you remain faithful.

If there is one place in the world that is unlike my little island of Barbados, it is New York City. In Barbados the tallest building is three stories, and the streets are lined with palm trees and cocoanut trees and all sorts of tropical things. In New York City you must go to a park to find a tree.

Yet I had to walk the streets of New York as though I walked the streets of Barbados. To one’s imagination all things are possible. I walked, feeling that I was actually walking the streets of Barbados, and in that assumption I could almost smell the odor of the cocoanut lined lanes. I began to create within my mind’s eye the atmosphere I would physically encounter were I in Barbados.

As I remained faithful to this assumption, somebody canceled passage and I received it. My brother in Barbados, who never thought of my coming home, has the commanding urge to write me a strange letter. He had never dictated to me, but this time he dictated, and thought that he originated the idea of my visit.

I went home and had three heavenly months, returned lst Class, and brought back quite a sum of cash in my pocket, a gift. My trip, had I paid for it, would have been $3,000, yet I did it without a nickel in my pocket.

“I have ways ye know not of. My ways are past finding out.” The dimensionally greater self took my assumption as the command and influenced the behaviour of my brother to write that letter, influenced the behaviour of someone to cancel that 1st Class passage, and did all the things necessary that would tend toward the production of the idea with which I was identified.

I was identified with the feeling of being there. I slept as though I were there, and the entire behaviour of man was molded in harmony with my assumption. I did not need to go down to Furness, Withy & Co. and beg them for a passage, asking them to cancel some one who was booked 1st Class. I did not need to write my brother and beg him to send me some money or buy me a passage. He thought he originated the act. Actually, to this day, he believes that be initiated the desire to bring me home.

My old friend Abdullah simply said to me, “You are in Barbados, Neville. You want to be there; wherever you want to be, there you are. Live as though you are and that you shall be.”

These are the two outlooks. on the world possessed by every man. I do not care who you are. Every child born of woman, regardless of race, nation, or creed, possesses two distinct outlooks on the world.

You are either the natural man who receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, because to you in the natural focus they are foolishness unto you. Or you are the spiritual man who perceiveth things outside of the limitations of your senses because all things are now realities in a dimensionally larger world. There is no need to wait four months to harvest.

You are either the woman of Samaria or Jesus at the well. You are the man waiting on the Five Porches for the disturbance and someone to push him in; or you are the one who can command yourself to rise and walk in spite of others who wait.

Are you the man behind the tombstones in the cemetery waiting and begging not to be clean, because you do not want to be cleansed of your prejudices? One of the most difficult things for man to give up is his superstitions, his prejudice. He holds on to these as though they were the treasure of treasures.

When you do become cleansed and you are free, then the womb, your own mind is automatically healed. It becomes the prepared ground where seeds, your desires, can take root and grow into manifestation. The child you now bear in your heart is your present objective. Your present longing is a child that is as though it were sick. If you assume you are now what you would like to be, the child for a moment becomes dead because there is no disturbance any more.

You cannot be disturbed when you feel you are what you want to be because if you feel you are what you wanted to be, you are satisfied in that assumption. To others who judge superficially you seem no longer to desire, so to them the desire or damsel is dead. They think you have lost your ambition because you no longer discuss your secret ambition. You have completely adjusted yourself to the idea. You have assumed that you are what you want to be. You know, “She is not dead, she but sleepth.” “I go to awaken her.”

I walk in the assumption that I am, and as I walk, I quietly awaken her. Then when she awakens I will do the normal, natural thing, I will give her to eat. I will not brag about it and tell others I simply go and tell no man. I feed this state I now like with my attention. I keep it alive within my world by becoming attentive to it.

Things that I am not attentive to fade and wither within my world, regardless of what they are. They are not just born and then remain unfed. I gave them birth by reason of the fact that I became conscious of being them. When I embody them within my world that is not the end. That is the beginning. Now I am a mother who must keep alive this state by being attentive to it. The day that I am not attentive, I have withdrawn my milk from it, and it fades from my world, as I become attentive to something else in my world.

You can either be attentive to the limitations and feed these and make them mountains, or you can be attentive to your desires; but to become attentive you must assume you are already that which you wanted to be.

Although today we speak of a third-dimensional and a fourth-dimensional focus, do not think for one moment these ancient teachers were not fully conscious of these two distinct centers of thought within the minds of all men. They personified these two, and they tried to show man that the only thing which robs him of the man he could be, is habit. Although it is not law, every psychologist will tell you that habit is the most inhibiting force in the world. It completely restricts man and binds him and makes him totally blind to what otherwise he should be.

Begin now to mentally see and feel yourself as that which you want to be, and feast upon that sensation morning, noon, and night. I have scoured the Bible for a time interval that is longer than three days and I have not found it.

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it Up.” John 2:19

“Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it.” Joshua 1:11

If I could completely saturate my mind with one sensation and walk as though it were already a fact, I am promised (and I cannot find any denial of it in this great book) that I do not need more than a three day diet if I remain faithful to it. But I must be honest about it. If I Change my diet in the course of the day, I extend the time interval.

You ask me, “But how do I know about the interval?” You, yourself determine the interval.

We have today in our modern world a little word which confuses most of us. I know it confused me until I dug deeper. The word is “action.” Action is supposed to be the most fundamental thing in the world. It is not an atom, it is more fundamental. It is not a part of an atom like an electron, it is more fundamental than that. They call it the fourth-dimensional unit. The most fundamental thing in the world is action.

You ask, “What is action?” Our physicists tell us that it is energy multiplied by time. We become more confused and say, “Energy multiplied by time, what does that mean?’, They answer, “There is no response to a stimulus, no matter how intense the stimulus, unless it endures for a certain length of time.” There must be a minimum endurance to the stimulus or there is no response. On the other hand there is no response to time unless there is a minimum degree of intensity. Today the most fundamental thing in the world is called action, or simply energy multiplied by time.

The Bible gives it as three days; the duration is three days for response in this world. If I would now assume I am what I want to be, and if I am faithful to it and walk as though I were, the very longest stretch given for its realization is three days.

If there is something tonight that you really want in this world, then experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you to realize your goal and deafen your ears, and blind your eyes to all that denies the reality of your assumption.

If you do this you would be able to tell me before I leave this city of Los Angeles that you have realized what was only a wish when you came here. It will be my joy to rejoice with you in the knowledge that the child which was seemingly dead is now alive. This damsel really was not dead, she was only asleep. You fed her in this silence because you have meat no one else knows of. You gave her food and she became a resurrected living reality within your world. Then you can share your joy with me and I can rejoice in your joy.

The purpose of these lessons is to remind you of the law of your own being, the law of consciousness; you are that law. You were only unconscious of its operation. You fed and kept alive the things you did not wish to express within this world.

Take my challenge and put this philosophy to the test. If it does not work you should not use it as a comforter. If it is not true, you must completely discard it. I know it is true. You will not know it until you try either to prove or disprove it.

Too many of us have joined “isms” and we are afraid to put them to the test because we feel we might fail; and, then, where are we? Not really wanting to know the truth concerning it, we hesitate to be bold enough to put it to the test. You say, “I know it would work in some other way. I do not want to really test it. While I have not yet disproved it, I can still be comforted by it.

Now do not fool yourself, do not think for one second be that you are wise.

Prove or disprove this law. I know that if you attempt to disprove it, you will prove it, and I will be the richer for your proving it, not in dollars, not in things, but because you become the living fruit of what I believe I am teaching in this world. It is far better to have you a successful, satisfied person after five days of instruction than to have you go out dissatisfied. I hope you will be bold enough to challenge this instruction and either prove or disprove it.

Now before we go into the silence period I shall briefly explain the technique again. We have two techniques in applying this law. Everyone here must now know exactly what he wants. You must know that if you do not get it tonight you will still be as desirous tomorrow concerning this objective.

When you know exactly what you want, construct in your mind s eye a single, simple event which implies fulfillment of your desire, an event where in self predominates. Instead of sitting back and looking at yourself as though you were on the screen, you be the actor in the drama.

Restrict the event to one single action. If you are going to shake a hand because that implies fulfillment of your desire then do that and that only. Do not shake hands and then wander off in your imagination to a dinner party or to some other place. Restrict your action to simply shaking hands and do it over and over again, until that handshake takes on the solidity and the distinctness of reality.

If you feel you cannot remain faithful to an action, I want you now to define your objective, and then condense the idea, which is your desire, into a single phrase, a phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, some phrase such as, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Or if I felt thankful because I thought someone was instrumental in bringing my desire to pass, I could say, “Thank you,” and repeat it with feeling over and over again like a lullaby until my mind was dominated by the single sensation of thankfulness.

We will now sit quietly in these chairs with the idea which implies fulfillment of our desire condensed to a single phrase, or to a single act. We will relax and immobilize our physical bodies. Then let us experience in imagination the sensation which our condensed phrase or action affirms.

If you imagine yourself shaking another person’s hand, do not use your physical hand, let it remain immobilized. But imagine that housed within your hand is a more subtle, more real hand, which can be extracted in your imagination. Put your imaginary hand into the imaginary hand of your friend who stands before you and feel the handshake. Keep your physical body immobilized even though you become mentally active in what you are now about to do.

Now we will go into the silence.

NO ONE TO CHANGE BUT SELF

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard Lesson 4

May I take just a minute to clarify what was said last night. A lady felt from what I said last night that I am anti one nation. I do hope that I am not anti any nation, race or belief. If perchance I used a nation, it was only to illustrate a point.

What I tried to tell you was this — we become what we contemplate. For it is the nature of love, as it is the nature of hate, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. Last night I simply read a news item to show you that when we think we can destroy our image by breaking the mirror, we are only fooling ourselves.

When, through war or revolution, we destroy titles which to us represent arrogance and greed, we become in time the embodiment of that which we thought we had destroyed. So today the people who thought they destroyed the tyrants are themselves that which they thought they had destroyed.

That I may not be misunderstood, let me again lay the foundation of this principle. Consciousness is the one and only reality. We are incapable of seeing other than the contents of our own consciousness

Therefore, hate betrays us in the hour of victory and condemns us to be that which we condemn. All conquest results in an exchange of characteristics, so that conquerors become like the conquered foe. We hate others for the evil which is in ourselves. Races, nations, and religious groups have lived for centuries in intimate hostility, and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate.

Nations act toward other nations as their own citizens act toward each other. When slavery exists in a state and that nation attacks another it is with intent to enslave. When there is a fierce economic competition between citizen and citizen, then in war with another nation the object of the war is to destroy the trade of the enemy. Wars of domination are brought about by the will of those who within a state are dominant over the fortunes of the rest.

We radiate the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling. But in this third-dimensional world of ours time beats slowly. And so we do not always observe the relationship of the visible world to our inner nature.

Now that is really what I meant. I thought I had said it. That I may not be misunderstood, that is my principle. You and I can contemplate an ideal, and become it by falling in love with it.

On the other hand we can contemplate something we heartily dislike and by condemning it we will become it. But because of the slowness of time in this three-dimensional world, when we do become what we contemplated we have forgotten that formerly we set out to worship or destroy it.

Tonight’s lesson is the capstone of the Bible, so do give me your attention. The most important question asked in the Bible will be found in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

As you know, all of the Bible stories are your stories; its characters live only in the mind of man. They have no reference at all to any person, who lived in time and space, or to any event that ever occurred upon earth.

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The drama related in Matthew takes place in this manner Jesus turns to his disciples and asks them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” Matt. 16:13

“And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”

“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?”

“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

“And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Matt. 16:14-18

Jesus turning to his disciples is man turning to his disciplined mind in self-contemplation. You ask yourself the question, “Whom do men say that I am?” In our language, “I wonder what men think of me?”

You answer, “Some say John come again, Some say Elias, others say Jeremiah, and still others a Prophet of old come again.”

It is very flattering to be told that you are, or that you resemble, the great men of the past, but enlightened reason is not enslaved by public opinion. It is only concerned with the truth so it asks itself another question, “But whom say ye that I am?” In other words, “Who am I?”

If I am bold enough to assume that I am Christ Jesus, the answer will come back, “Thou are Christ Jesus.”

When I can assume it and feel it and boldly live it, I will say to myself, “Flesh and blood could not have told me this. But my Father which is in Heaven revealed it unto me.” Then I make this concept of Self the rock on which I establish my church, my world.

“If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24

Because consciousness is the only reality I must assume that I am already that which I desire to be. If I do not believe that I am already what I want to be, then I remain as I am and die in this limitation.

Man is always looking for some prop on which to lean. He is always looking for some excuse to justify failure. This revelation gives man no excuse for failure. His concept of himself is the cause of all the circumstances of his life. All changes must first come from within himself; and if he does not change on the outside it is because he has not changed within. But man does not like to feel that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life.

“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”

“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?”

“Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” John 6:66-68

I may not like what I have just heard, that I must turn to my own consciousness as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained. It was easier living when I could blame another. It was much easier living when I could blame society for my ills, or point a finger across the sea. and blame another nation. It was easier living when I could blame the weather for the way I feel.

But to tell me that I am the cause of all that happens to me that I am forever molding my world in harmony with my inner nature, that is more than man is willing to accept. If this is true, to whom would I go? If these are the words of eternal life, I must return to them, even though they seem so difficult to digest.

When man fully understands this, he knows that public opinion does not matter, for men only tell him who he is. The behaviour of men constantly tell me who I have conceived myself to be.

If I accept this challenge and begin to live by it, I finally reach the point that is called the great prayer of the Bible. It is related in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” John 17:4

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” John 17:5

“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.” John 17:12

It is impossible for anything to be lost. In this divine economy nothing can be lost, it cannot even pass away. The little flower which has bloomed once, blooms forever. It is invisible to you here with your limited focus, but it blooms forever in the larger dimension of your being, and tomorrow you will encounter it.

All that thou gavest me I have kept in thy name, and none have I lost save the son of perdition. The son of perdition means simply the belief in loss. Son is a concept, an idea. Perdido is loss. I have only truly lost the concept of loss, for nothing can be lost.

I can descend from the sphere where the thing itself now lives, and as I descend in consciousness to a lower level within myself it passes from my world. I say, “I have lost my health. I have lost my wealth. I have lost my standing in the community. I have lost faith. I have lost a thousand things.” But the things in themselves, having once been real in my world, can never cease to be. They never become unreal with the passage of time.

I, by my descent in consciousness to a lower level, cause these things to disappear from my sight and I say, “They have gone; they are finished as far as my world goes.” All I need do is to ascend to the level where they are eternal, and they once more objectify themselves and appear as realities within my world.

The crux of the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John is found in the 19th verse, “And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

Heretofore I thought I could change others through effort. Now I know I cannot change another unless I first change myself. To change another within my world I must first change my concept of that other; and to do it best I change my concept of self. For it was the concept I held of self that made me see others as I did.

Had I a noble, dignified concept of myself, I never could have seen the unlovely in others.

Instead of trying to change others through argument and force, let me but ascend in consciousness to a higher level and I will automatically change others by changing self. “There is no one to change but self; that self is simply your awareness, your consciousness and the world in which it lives is determined by the concept you hold of self. It is to consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality. For there is no clear conception of the origin of phenomena except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness.

You need no helper to bring you what you seek. Do not for one second believe that I am advocating escape from reality when I ask you to simply assume you are now the man or the lady that you want to be.

If you and I could feel what it would be like were we now that which we want to be, and live in this mental atmosphere as though it were real, then, in a way we do not know, our assumption would harden into fact. This is all we need do in order to ascend to the level where our assumption is already an objective, concrete reality.

I need change no man, I sanctify myself and in so doing I sanctify others. To the pure all things are pure. “There is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” Rom. 14:14. There is nothing in itself unclean, but you, by your concept of self, see things either clean or unclean.

“I and my Father are one.” John 10:30.

“If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.”

“But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.’ John 10:37, 38

He made himself one with God and thought it not strange or robbery to do the works of God. You always bear fruit in harmony with what you are. It is the most natural thing in the world for a pear tree to bear pears, an apple tree to bear apples, and for man to mold the circumstances of his life in harmony with his inner nature.

“I am the vine, ye are the branches.” John 15:5. A branch has no life save it be rooted in the vine. All I need do to change the fruit is to change the vine.

You have no life in my world save that I am conscious of you. You are rooted in me and, like fruit, you bear witness of the vine that I am. There is no reality in the world other than your consciousness. Although you may now seem to be what you do not want to be, all you need do to change it, and to prove the change by circumstances in your world, is to quietly assume that you are that which you now want to be, and in a way you do not know you will become it.

There is no other way to change this world. “I am the way.” My I AMness, my consciousness is the way by which I change my world. As I change my concept of self, I change my world. When men and women help or hinder us, they only play the part that we, by our concept of self, wrote for them, and they play it automatically. They must play the parts they are playing because we are what we are.

You will change the world only when you become the embodiment of that which you want the world to be. You have but one gift in this world that is truly yours to give and that is yourself. Unless you yourself are that which you want the world to be, you will never see it in this world. “Except ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24

Do you know that no two in this room live in the same world. We are going home to different worlds tonight. We close our doors on entirely different worlds. We rise tomorrow and go to work, where we meet each other and meet others, but we live in different mental worlds, different physical worlds.

I can only give what I am, I have no other gift to give. If I want the world to be perfect, and who does not, I have failed only because I did not know that I could never see it perfect until I myself become perfect. If I am not perfect I cannot see perfection, but the day that I become it, I beautify my world because I see it through my own eyes. “Unto the pure all things are pure.” Titus 1:15

No two here can tell me that you have heard the same message any one night. The one thing that you must do is hear what I say through that which you are. It must be filtered through your prejudices, your superstitions, and your concept of self. Whatever you are, it must come through that, and be colored by what you are.

If you are disturbed and you would like me to be something other than what I appear to be, then you must be that which you want me to be. We must become the thing that we want others to be or we will never see them be it.

Your consciousness, my consciousness, is the only true foundation in the world. This is that which is called Peter in the Bible, not a man, this faithfulness that cannot turn to anyone, that cannot be flattered when you are told by men you are John come again. That is very flattering to be told you are John the Baptist come again, or the great Prophet Elias, or Jeremiah.

Then I deafen my ears to this very flattering little bit of news men would give me and I ask myself,
“But honestly who am I?”

If I can deny the limitations of my birth, my environment, and the belief that I am but an extension of my family tree, and feel within myself that I am Christ, and sustain this assumption until it takes a central place and forms the habitual center of my energy, I will do the works attributed to Jesus. Without thought or effort I will mold a world in harmony with that perfection which I have assumed and feel springing within me.

When I open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, give joy for mourning and beauty for ashes, then and only then, have I truly established this vine deep within. That is what I would automatically do were I truly conscious of being Christ. It is said of this presence, He proved that He was Christ by His works.

Our ordinary alterations of consciousness, as we pass from one state to another, are not transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction;
but whenever our assumption grows so stable as to definitely expel its rivals, then that central habitual concept defines our character and is a true transformation.

Jesus, or enlightened reason, saw nothing unclean in the woman taken in adultery. He said to her, “Hath no man condemned thee?” John 8:10

“She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” John 8:11

No matter what is brought before the presence of beauty, it sees only beauty. Jesus was so completely identified with the lovely that He was incapable of seeing the unlovely.

When you and I really become conscious of being Christ, we too will straighten the arms of the withered, and resurrect the dead hopes of men. We will do all the things that we could not do when we felt ourselves limited by our family tree. It is a bold step and should not be taken lightly, because to do it is to die. John, the man of three dimensions is beheaded, or loses his three-dimensional focus that Jesus, the fourth-dimensional Self may live.

Any enlargement of our concept of Self involves a somewhat painful parting with strongly rooted hereditary conceptions. The ligaments are strong that hold us in the womb of conventional limitations. All that you formerly believed, you no longer believe. You know now that there is no power outside of your own consciousness. Therefore you cannot turn to anyone outside of self.

You have no ears for the suggestion that something else has power in it. You know the only reality is God, and God is your own consciousness. There is no other God. Therefore on this rock you build the everlasting church and boldly assume you are this Divine Being, self-begotten because you dared to appropriate that which was not given to you in your cradle, a concept of Self not formed in your mother’s womb, a concept of self conceived outside of the offices of man.

The story is beautifully told us in the Bible using the two sons of Abraham: one the blessed, Isaac, born outside of the offices of man and the other, Ishmael, born in bondage.

Sarah was much too old to beget a child, so her husband Abraham went in unto the bondservant Hagar, the pilgrim, and she conceived of the old man and bore him a son called Ishmael. Ishmael’s hand was against every man and every man’s hand against him.

Every child born of woman is born into bondage, born into all that his environment represents, regardless of whether it be the throne of England, the White House, or any great place in the world. Every child born of woman is personified as this Ishmael, the child of Hagar.

But asleep in every child is the blessed Isaac, who is born outside of the offices of man, and is born through faith alone. This second child has no earthly father. He is Self-begotten.

What is the second birth? I find myself man, I cannot go back into my mother’s womb, and yet I must be born a second time. “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

I quietly appropriate that which no man can give me, no woman can give me. I dare to assume that I am God. This must be of faith, this must be of promise. Then I become the blessed, I become Isaac.

As I begin to do the things that only this presence could do, I know that I am born out of the limitations of Ishmael, and I have become heir to the kingdom. Ishmael could not inherit anything, although his father was Abraham, or God. Ishmael did not have both parents of the godly; his mother was Hagar the bond-woman, and so he could not partake of his father’s estate.

You are Abraham and Sarah, and contained within your own consciousness there is one waiting for recognition. In the Old Testament it is called Isaac, and in the New Testament it is called Jesus, and it is born without the aid of man.

No man can tell you that you are Christ Jesus, no man can tell you and convince you that you are God. You must toy with the idea and wonder what it would be like to be God.

No clear conception of the origin of phenomena is possible except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness. Nothing can be evolved from man that was not potentially involved in his nature. The ideal we serve and hope to attain could never be evolved from us were it not potentially involved in our nature.

Let me now retell and emphasize an experience of mine printed by me two years ago under the title, THE SEARCH. I think it will help you to understand this law of consciousness, and show you that you have no one to change but self, for you are incapable of seeing other than the contents of your own consciousness.

Once in an idle interval at sea, I meditated on “the perfect state,” and wondered what I would be were I of too pure eyes to behold iniquity, if to me all things were pure and were I without condemnation. As I became lost in this fiery brooding, I found myself lifted above the dark environment of the senses. So intense was feeling I felt myself a being of fire dwelling in a body of air. Voices, as from a heavenly chorus, with the exaltation of those who had been conquerors in a conflict with death, were singing, “He is risen -He is risen,” and intuitively I knew they meant me.

Then I seemed to be walking in the night. I soon came upon a scene that might have been the ancient Pool of Bethesda for in this place lay a great multitude of impotent folk — blind, halt, withered -waiting not for the moving of the water as of tradition, but waiting for me.

As I came near, without thought or effort on my part, they were one after the other, molded as by the Magician of the Beautiful. Eyes, hands, feet — all missing members — were drawn from some invisible reservoir and molded in harmony with that perfection which I felt springing within me. When all were made perfect the chorus exulted, “It is finished.”

I know this vision was the result of my intense meditation upon the idea of perfection, for my meditations invariably bring about union with the state contemplated. I had been so completely absorbed within the idea that for awhile I had become what I contemplated, and the high purpose with which I had for that moment identified myself drew the companionship of high things and fashioned the vision in harmony with my inner nature.

The ideal with which we are united works by association of ideas to awaken a thousand moods to create a drama in keeping with the central idea.

My mystical experiences have convinced me that there is no way to bring about the perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. As soon as we succeed in transforming ourselves, the world will melt magically before our eyes and reshape itself in harmony with that which our transformation affirms.

We fashion the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling, and we illuminate or darken our lives by the concepts we hold of ourselves. Nothing is more important to us than our conception of ourselves, and especially is true of our concept of the deep, dimensionally greater One within us.

Those that help or hinder us, whether they know it or not, are the servants of that law which shapes outward circumstances in harmony with our inner nature. It is our conception of ourselves which frees or constrains us, though it may use material agencies to achieve its purpose.

Because life molds the outer world to reflect the inner arrangement of our minds, there is no way of bringing about the outer perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. No help cometh from without: the hills to which we lift our eyes are those of an inner range.

It is thus to our own consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained. We can rely absolutely on the justice of this law to give us only that which is of the nature of ourselves.

To attempt to change the world before we change our concept of ourselves is to struggle against the nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an inner change.

As within, so without.

I am not advocating philosophical indifference when I suggest that we should imagine ourselves as already that which we want to be, living in a mental atmosphere of greatness, rather than using physical means and arguments to bring about the desired changes.

Everything we do, unaccompanied by a change of consciousness, is but futile readjustment of surfaces. However we toil or struggle, we can receive no more than our concepts of Self affirm. To protest against anything which happens to us is to protest against the law of our being and our ruler ship over our own destiny.

The circumstances of my life are too closely related to my conception of myself not to have been formed by my own spirit from some dimensionally larger storehouse of my being. If there is pain to me in these happenings, I should look within myself for the cause, for I am moved here and there and made to live in a world in harmony with my concept of myself.

If we would become as emotionally aroused over our ideas as we become over our dislikes, we would ascend to the plane of our ideal as easily as we now descend to the level of our hates.

Love and hate have a magical transforming power, and we grow through their exercise into the likeness of what we contemplate. By intensity of hatred we create in ourselves the character we imagine in our enemies. Qualities die for want of attention, so the unlovely states might best be rubbed out by imagining “‘beauty for ashes and joy for mourning” rather than by direct attacks on the state from which we would be free.

“Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, think on these things,” for we become that with which we are en rapport.

There is nothing to change but our concept of self. As soon as we succeed in transforming self, our world will dissolve and reshape itself in harmony with that which our change affirms.

I, by descent in consciousness, have brought about the imperfection that I see. In the divine economy nothing is lost. We cannot lose anything save by descent in consciousness from the sphere where the thing has its natural life.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” John 17:5

As I ascend in consciousness the power and the glory that was mine return to me and I too will say “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” The work is to return from my descent in consciousness, from the level wherein I believed that I was a son of man, to the sphere where I know that I am one with my Father and my Father is God.

I know beyond all doubt that there is nothing for man to do but to change his own concept of himself to assume greatness and sustain this assumption. If we walk as though we were already the ideal we serve, we will rise to the level of our assumption, and find a world in harmony with our assumption. We will not have to lift a finger to make it so, for it is already so. It was always so.

You and I have descended in consciousness to the level where we now find ourselves and we see imperfection because we have descended! When we begin to ascend while here in this three-dimensional world, we find that we move in an entirely different environment, we have entirely different circles of friends, and an entirely different world while still living here. We know the great mystery of the statement, “I am in the world but not of it.”

Instead of changing things I would suggest to all to identify themselves with the ideal they contemplate. What would the feeling be like were you of too pure eyes to behold iniquity if to you all things were pure and you were without condemnation? Contemplate the ideal state and identify yourself with it and you will ascend to the sphere where you as Christ have your natural life.

You are still in that state where you were before the world was. The only thing that has fallen is your concept of self. You see the broken parts which really are not broken. You are seeing them through distorted eyes, as though you were in one of those peculiar amusement gallery’s where a man walks before a mirror and he is elongated, yet he is the same man. Or he looks into another mirror and he is all big and fat. These things are seen today because man is what he is.

Toy with the idea of perfection. Ask no man to help you, but let the prayer of the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John be your prayer. Appropriate the state that was yours before the world was.

Know the truth of the statement, “None have I lost save the son of perdition.” Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain. The only thing that you lose is the belief in loss or the son of perdition.

“And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” John 17:19

There is no one to change but self. All you need do to make men and women holy in this world is to make yourself holy. You are incapable of seeing anything that is unlovely when you establish within your own mind’s eye the fact that you are lovely.

It is far better to know this than to know anything else in the world. It takes courage, boundless courage, because many this night, after having heard this truth will still be inclined to blame others for their predicament. Man finds it so difficult to turn to himself, to his own consciousness as to the only reality. Listen to these words:

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” John 6:44

“I and my Father are one.” John 10:30

“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” John 3:27

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.”

“No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” John 10:17,18.

“You did not choose me, I have chosen you.” My concept of myself molds a world in harmony with itself and draws men to tell me constantly by their behaviour who I am.

The most important thing in this world to you is your concept of self. When you dislike your environment, the circumstances of life and the behaviour of men, ask yourself, ” Who am I?” It is your answer to this question hat is the cause of your dislikes.

If you do not condemn self there will be no man in your world to condemn you. If you are living in the consciousness of your ideal you will see nothing to condemn. “To the pure all things are pure.”

Now I would like to spend a little time making as clear as I can what I personally do when I pray, what I do when I want to bring about changes in my world. You will find it interesting, and you will find that it works. No one here can tell me they cannot do it. It is so very simple all can do it. We are what we imagine we are.

This technique is not difficult to follow, but you must want to do it. You cannot approach it with the attitude of mind “Oh well I’ll try it.” You must want to do it, because the mainspring of action is desire.

Desire is the mainspring of all action. Now what do I want? I must define my objective. For example, suppose I wanted now to be elsewhere. This very moment I really desire to be elsewhere. I need not go through the door, I need not sit down. I need do nothing but stand just where I am and with my eyes closed, assume that I am actually standing where I desire to be. Then I remain in this state until it has the feeling of reality. Were I now elsewhere I could not see the world as I now see it from here. The world changes in its relationship to me as I change my position in space.

So I stand right here, close my eyes, and imagine I am seeing what I would see were I there. I remain in it long enough to feel it to be real. I cannot touch the walls of this room from here, but when you close your eyes and become still you can imagine and feel that you touch it. You can stand where you are and imagine you are putting your hand on that wall. To prove you really are, put it there and slide it up and feel the wood. You can imagine you are doing it without getting off your seat. You can do it and you will actually feel it if you become still enough and intense enough

I stand where I am and I allow the world that I want to see and to enter physically to come before me as though I were there now. In other words, I bring elsewhere here by assuming that I am there.

Is that clear? I let it come up, I do not make it come up. I simply imagine I am there and then let it happen.

If I want a physical presence, I imagine he is standing here, and I touch him All through the Bible I find these suggestions, “He placed his hands upon them. He touched them.”

If you want to comfort someone, what is the automatic feeling? To put your hand on them, you cannot resist it. You meet a friend and the hand goes out automatically, you either shake hands or put your hand on his shoulder.

Suppose you were now to meet a friend that you have not seen for a year and he is a friend of whom you are very fond. What would you do? You would embrace him, wouldn’t you? Or you would put your hand upon him.

In your imagination bring him close enough to put your hand upon him and feel him to be solidly real. Restrict the action to just that. You will be amazed at what happens. From then on things begin to move. Your dimensionally greater self will inspire, in all, the ideas and actions necessary to bring you into physical contact. It works that way.

Every day I put myself into the drowsy state; it is a very easy thing to do. But habit is a strange thing in man’s world. It is not law, but habit acts as though it were the most compelling law in the world. We are creatures of habit.

If you create an interval every day into which you put yourself into the drowsy state, say at 3 o’clock in the afternoon do you know at that moment every day you will feel drowsy. You try it for one week and see if I am not right.

You sit down for the purpose of creating a state akin to sleep, as though you were sleepy, but do not push the drowsiness too far, just far enough to relax and leave you in control of the direction of your thoughts. You try it for one week, and every day at that hour, no matter what you are doing, you will hardly be able to keep your eyes open. If you know the hour when you will be free you can create it. I would not suggest that you do it lightly, because you will feel very, very sleepy and you may not want to.

I have another way of praying. In this case I always sit down and I find the most comfortable arm chair imaginable, or I lie flat on my back and relax completely. Make yourself comfortable. You must not be in any position where the body is distressed. Always put yourself into a position where you have the greatest ease. That is the first stage.

To know what you want is the start of prayer. Secondly you construct in your mind’s eye one single little event which implies that you have realized your desire. I always let my mind roam on many things that could follow the answered prayer and I single out one that is most likely to follow the fulfillment of my desire. One simple little thing like the shaking of a hand, embracing a person, the receiving of a letter, the writing of a check, or whatever would imply the fulfillment of your desire.

After you have decided on the action which implies that your desire has been realized, then sit in your nice comfortable chair or lie flat on your back, close your eyes for the simple reason it helps to induce this state that borders on sleep.

The minute you feel this lovely drowsy state, or the feeling of gathered togetherness, wherein you feel- I could move if I wanted to, but I do not want to, I could open my eyes if I wanted to, but I do not want to. When you get that feeling you can be quite sure that you are in the perfect state to pray successfully.

In this feeling it is easy to touch anything in this world. You take the simple little restricted action which implies fulfillment of your prayer and you feel it or you enact it. Whatever it is, you enter into the action as though you were an actor in the part. You do not sit back and visualize yourself doing it. You do it.

With the body immobilized you imagine that the greater you inside the physical body is coming out of it and that you are actually performing the proposed action. If you are going to walk, you imagine that you are walking. Do not see yourself walk, FEEL that you are walking.

If you are going to climb stairs, FEEL that you are climbing the stairs. Do not visualize yourself doing it, feel yourself doing it. If you are going to shake a man’s hand, do not visualize yourself shaking his hand, imagine your friend is standing before you and shake his hand. But leave your physical hands immobilized and imagine that your greater hand, which is your imaginary hand, is actually shaking his hand.

All you need do is to imagine that you are doing it. You are stretched out in time, and what you are doing, which seems to be a controlled day dream, is an actual act in the greater dimension of your being. You are actually encountering an event fourth-dimensionally before you encounter it here in the three-dimensions of space, and you do not have to raise a finger to bring that state to pass.

My third way of praying is simply to feel thankful. If I want something, either for myself or another, I immobilize the physical body, then I produce the state akin to sleep and in that state just feel happy, feel thankful, which thankfulness implies realization of what I want. I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and with my mind dominated by this single sensation I go to sleep. I need do nothing to make it so, because it is so. My feeling of the wish fulfilled implies it is done.

All these techniques you can use and change them to fit your temperament. But I must emphasize the necessity of inducing the drowsy state where you can become attentive without effort.

A single sensation dominates the mind, if you pray successfully.

What would I feel like, now, were I what I want to be? When I know what the feeling would be like I then close my eyes and lose myself in that single sensation and my dimensionally greater Self then builds a bridge of incident to lead me from this present moment to the fulfillment of my mood. That is all you need do. But people have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things.

We are creatures of habit and we are slowly learning to relinquish our previous concepts, but the things we formerly lived by still in some way influence our behaviour. Here is a story from the Bible that illustrates my point.

It is recorded that Jesus told his disciples to go to the crossroads and there they would find a colt, a young colt not yet ridden by a man. To bring the colt to him and if any man ask, “Why do you take this colt?” say, “The Lord has need of it.”

They went to the crossroads and found the colt and did exactly as they were told. They brought the unbridled ass to Jesus and He rode it triumphantly into Jerusalem.

The story has nothing to do with a man riding on a little colt. You are Jesus of the story. The colt is the mood you are going to assume. That is the living animal not yet ridden by you. What would the feeling be like were you to realize your desire? A new feeling, like a young Colt, is a very difficult thing to ride unless you ride him with a disciplined mind. If I do not remain faithful to the mood the young colt throws me off. Every time you become conscious that you are not faithful to this mood, you have been thrown from the colt.

Discipline your mind that you may remain faithful to a high mood and ride it triumphantly into Jerusalem, which is fulfillment, or the city of peace.

This story precedes the feast of the Passover. If we would pass from our present state into that of our ideal, we must assume that we are already that which we desire to be and remain faithful to our assumption, for we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest.

A fixed attitude of mind, a feeling that it is done will make it so. If I walk as though it were, but every once in a while I look to see if it really is, then I fall off my mood or colt.

If I would suspend judgment like Peter I could walk on the water. Peter starts walking on the water, and then he begins to look unto his own understanding and he begins to go down. The voice said, “Look up, Peter.” Peter looks up and he rises again and continues walking on the water.

Instead of looking down to see if this thing is really going to harden into fact, you simply know that it is already so, sustain that mood and you will ride the unbridled colt into the city of Jerusalem All of us must learn to ride the animal straight in to Jerusalem unassisted by a man. You do not need another to help you.

The strange thing is that as we keep the high mood and do not fall, others cushion the blows. They spread the palm leaves before me to cushion my journey. I do not have to be concerned. The shocks will be softened as I move into the fulfillment of my desire. My high mood awakens in others the ideas and actions which tend towards the embodiment of my mood. If you walk faithful to a high mood there will be no opposition and no competition.

The test of a teacher, or a teaching, is to be found in the faithfulness of the taught. I am leaving here on Sunday night. Do remain faithful to this instruction. If you look for causes outside the consciousness of man, then I have not convinced you of the reality of consciousness.

If you look for excuses for failure you will always find them, for you find what you seek. If you seek an excuse for failure, you will find it in the stars, in the numbers, in the tea cup, or most any place. The excuse will not be there but you will find it to justify your failure.

Successful business and professional men and women know that this law works. You will not find it in gossip groups, but you will find it in courageous hearts.

Man’s eternal journey is for one purpose: to reveal the Father. He comes to make visible his Father. And his Father is made visible in all the lovely things of this world. All the things that are lovely, that are of good report, ride these things, and have no time for the unlovely in this world, regardless of what it is.

Remain faithful to the knowledge that your consciousness, your I AMness, your awareness of being aware of the only reality. It is the rock on which all phenomena can be explained. There is no explanation outside of that. I know of no clear conception of the origin of phenomena save that consciousness is all and all is consciousness.

That which you seek is already housed within you. Were it not now within you eternity could not evolve it. No time stretch would be long enough to evolve what is not potentially involved in you.

You simply let it into being by assuming that it is already visible in your world, and remaining faithful to your assumption. it will harden into fact. Your Father has unnumbered ways of revealing your assumption. Fix this in your mind and always remember, “An assumption, though false, if sustained will harden into fact.”

You and your Father are one and your Father is everything that was, is and will be. Therefore that which you seek you already are, it can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation.

The great Pascal said, “You never would have sought me had you not already found me. “What you now desire you already have and you seek it only because you have already found it. You found it in the form of desire. It is just as real in the form of desire as it is going to be to your bodily organs.

You are already that which you seek and you have no one to change but Self in order to express it.

REMAIN FAITHFUL TO YOUR IDEA

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard Lesson 5

Tonight we have the fifth and last lesson in this course. First I shall give you a sort of summary of what has gone before. Then, since so many of you have asked me to elaborate further on Lesson 3, I shall give you a few more ideas on thinking fourth-dimensionally.

I know that when a man sees a thing clearly he can tell it, he can explain it. This past winter in Barbados a fisherman, whose vocabulary would not encompass a thousand words, told me more in five minutes about the behaviour of the dolphin than Shakespeare with his vast vocabulary could have told me, if he did not know the habits of the dolphin.

This fisherman told me how the dolphin loves to play on a piece of drift-wood, and in order to catch him, you throw the wood out and bait him as you would bait children, because he likes to pretend he is getting out of the water. As I said, this man’s vocabulary was very limited, but he knew his fish, and he knew the sea. Because he knew his dolphin he could tell me all about their habits and how to catch them.

When you say you know a thing but you cannot explain it, I say you do not know it, for when you really know it you naturally express it.

If I should ask you now to define prayer, and say to you, “How would you, through prayer, go about realizing an objective, any objective?” If you can tell me, then you know it; but if you cannot tell me, then you do not know it. When you see it clearly in the mind’s eye the greater you will inspire the words which are necessary to clothe the idea and express it beautifully, and you will express the idea far better than a man with a vast vocabulary who does not see it as clearly as you do.

If you have listened carefully throughout the past four days, you know now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons that ever existed, or to any events that ever occurred upon earth.

The authors of the Bible were not writing history, they were writing a great drama of the mind which they dressed up in the garb of history, and then adapted it to the limited capacity of the uncritical, unthinking masses.

You know that every story in the Bible is your story, that when the writers introduce dozens of characters in the same story they are trying to present you with different attributes of the mind that you may employ. You saw it as I took perhaps a dozen or more stories and interpreted them for you.

For instance, many people wonder how Jesus, the most gracious, the most loving man in the world, if he be man, could say to his mother, what he is supposed to have said to her as recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus is made to say to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” John 2:4.

You and I, who are not yet identified with the ideal we serve, would not make such a statement to our mother. Yet here was the embodiment of love saying to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

You are Jesus, and your mother is your own consciousness. For consciousness is the cause of all, therefore, it is the great father-mother of all phenomena.

You and I are creatures of habit. We get into the habit of accepting as final the evidence of our senses. Wine is needed for the guests and my senses tell me that there is no wine, and I through habit am about to accept this lack as final. When I remember that my consciousness is the one and only reality, therefore if I deny the evidence of my senses and assume the consciousness of having sufficient wine, I have in a sense rebuked my mother or the consciousness which suggested lack; and by assuming the consciousness of having what I desire for my guests, wine is produced in a way we do not know.

I have just read a note here from a dear friend of mine in the audience. Last Sunday he had an appointment at a church for a wedding; the clock told him he was late, everything told him he was late.

He was standing on a street corner waiting for a street car. There was none in sight. He imagined that, instead of being on the street corner, that he was in the church. At that moment a car stopped in front of him. My friend told the driver of his predicament and the driver said to him, “I am not going that way, but I will take you there.” My friend got into the car and was at the church in time for the service. That is applying the law correctly, non-acceptance of the suggestion of lateness. Never accept the suggestion of lack.

In this case I say to myself, “What have I to do with thee?” What have I to do with the evidence of my senses? Bring me all the pots and fill them. In other words, I assume that I have wine and all that I desire. Then my dimensionally greater Self inspires in all, the thoughts and the actions which aid the embodiment of my assumption.

It is not a man saying to a mother, “Woman what have I to do with thee?” It is every man who knows this law who will say to himself, when his senses suggest lack, “what have I to do with thee. Get behind me.” I will never again listen to a voice like that, because if I do, then I am impregnated by that suggestion and I will bear the fruit of lack.

We turn to another story in the Gospel of St. Mark where Jesus is hungry.

“And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.”

“And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.” Mark 11:13, 14

“And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.” Mark 11:20

What tree am I blasting? Not a tree on the outside. It is my own consciousness. “I am the vine.” John 15:1. My consciousness, my I AMness is the great tree, and habit once more suggests emptiness, it suggests barrenness, it suggests four months before I can feast. But I cannot wait four months. I give myself this powerful suggestion that never again will I even for a moment relieve that it will take four months to realize my desire. The belief in lack must from this day on be barren and never again reproduce itself in my mind.

It is not a man blasting a tree. Everything in the Bible takes place in the mind of man: the tree, the city, the people, everything. There is not a statement made in the Bible that does not represent some attribute of the human mind. They are all personifications of the mind and not things within the world.

Consciousness is the one and only reality. There is no one to whom we can turn after we discover that our own awareness is God. For God is the cause of all and there is nothing but God. You cannot say that a devil causes some things and God others. Listen to these words.

“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”

“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.”

“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” Isaiah 45: 1, 2, 3

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7.

“I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.”

“I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 45:12, 13

“I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.” Isaiah 45:5.

Read these words carefully. They are not my words, they are the inspired words of men who discovered that consciousness is the only reality. If I am hurt, I am self hurt. If there is darkness in my world, I created the darkness and the gloom and the depression. If there is light and joy, I created the light and the joy. There is no one but this I AMness that does all.

You cannot find a cause outside of your own consciousness. Your world is a grand mirror constantly telling you who you are. As you meet people, they tell you by their behaviour who you are.

Your prayers will not be less devout because you turn to your own consciousness for help. I do not think that any person in prayer feels more of the joy, the piety, and the feeling of adoration, than I do when I feel thankful, as I assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled, knowing at the same time it is to myself that I turned.

In prayer you are called upon to believe that you possess what your reason and your senses deny. When you pray believe that you have and you shall receive. The Bible states it this way:

“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

“And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

“But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” Mark 11:24, 25, 26

That is what we must do when we pray. If I hold some thing against another, be it a belief of sickness, poverty , or anything else, I must loose it and let it go, not by using words of denial but by believing him to be what he desires to be. In that way I completely forgive him. I changed my concept of him. I had ought against him and I forgave him Complete forgetfulness is forgiveness. If I do not forget then I have not forgiven.

I only forgive something when I truly forget. I can say to you until the end of time, “I forgive you.” But if every time I see you or think of you, I am reminded of what I held against you, I have not forgiven you at all. Forgiveness is complete forgetfulness. You go to a doctor and he gives you something for your sickness. He is trying to take it from you, so he gives you something in place of it.

Give yourself a new concept of self for the old concept. Give up the old concept completely.

A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, I myself am the spring of action, the directing mind and the one who grants the prayer.

Anyone who prays successfully turns within, and appropriates the state sought. You have no sacrifice to offer. Do not let anyone tell you that you must struggle and suffer. You need not struggle for the realization of your desire. Read what it says in the Bible.

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.”

“When ye come to appear before me, who hath required that at your hand, to tread my courts?”

“Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.”

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them” Isaiah 1:11-14

“Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel.” Isaiah 30:29

“Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth.” Isaiah 42: 10.

“Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.” Isaiah 44:23

“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. They shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” Isaiah 51:11

The only acceptable gift is a joyful heart. Come with singing and praise. That is the way to come before the Lord — your own consciousness. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, and you have brought the only acceptable gift. All states of mind other than that of the wish fulfilled are an abomination; they are superstition and mean nothing.

When you come before me, rejoice, because rejoicing implies that something has happened which you desired. Come before me singing, giving praise, and giving thanks, for these states of mind imply acceptance of the state sought. Put yourself in the proper mood and your own consciousness will embody it.

If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.” I would try to sustain it without effort, that is, I would live and act as though it were already a fact, knowing that as I walk in this fixed attitude my assumption will harden into fact.

Time does not permit me to go any further into the argument that the Bible is not history. But if you have listened attentively to my message these past four nights, I do not think you want any more proof that the Bible is not history. Apply what you have heard and you will realize your desires.

**************

“And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” John 14:29

Many persons, myself included, have observed events before they occurred; that is, before they occurred in this world of three dimensions. Since man can observe an event before it occurs in the three dimensions of space, then life on earth proceeds according to plan; and this plan must exist elsewhere in another dimension and is slowly moving through our space.

If the occurring events were not in this world when they were observed, then to be perfectly logical they must have been out of this world. And whatever is THERE to be seen before it occurs HERE must be “pre-determined” from the point of view of man awake in a three-dimensional world. Yet the ancient teachers taught us that we could alter the future, and my own experience confirms the truth of their teaching.

Therefore, my object in giving this course is to indicate possibilities inherent in man, to show that man can alter his: future; but, thus altered, it forms again a deterministic sequence starting from the point of interference — a future that will be consistent with the alteration.

The most remarkable feature of man’s future is its flexibility. The future, although prepared in advance in every detail, has several outcomes. We have at every moment of our lives the choice before us which of several futures we will have.

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by everyone — a natural focus and a spiritual focus. The ancient teachers called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We may differentiate them as ordinary waking consciousness, governed by our senses, and a controlled imagination, governed by desire.

We recognize these two distinct centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Cor. 2:14

The natural view confines reality to the moment called NOW. To the natural view, the past and future are purely imaginary. The spiritual view on the other hand sees the contents of time. The past and future are a present whole to the spiritual view. What is mental and subjective to the natural man is concrete and objective to the spiritual man.

The habit of seeing only that which our senses permit renders us totally blind to what, otherwise, we could see. To cultivate the faculty of seeing the invisible, we should often deliberately disentangle our minds from the evidence of the senses and focus our attention on an invisible state, mentally feeling it and sensing it until it has all the distinctness of reality.

Earnest, concentrated thought focused in a particular direction shuts out other sensations and causes them to disappear. We have only to concentrate on the state desired in order to see it.

The habit of withdrawing attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on the invisible develops our spiritual outlook and enables us to penetrate beyond the world of sense and to see that which is invisible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” Rom. 1:20. This vision is completely independent of the natural faculties. Open it and quicken it!

A little practice will convince us that we can, by controlling our imagination, reshape our future in harmony with our desire. Desire is the mainspring of action. We could not move a single finger unless we had a desire to move it. No matter what we do, we follow the desire which at the moment dominates our minds. When we break a habit, our desire to break it is greater than our desire to continue the habit.

The desires which impel us to action are those which hold our attention. A desire is but an awareness of something we lack and need to make our life more enjoyable. Desires always have some personal gain in view, the greater the anticipated gain, the more intense is the desire. There is no absolutely unselfish desire. Where there is nothing to gain there is no desire, and consequently no action.

The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in ready obedience to its voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal has said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.”

Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, and then living and acting on this conviction, alters the future in harmony with his assumption. Assumptions awaken what they affirm. As soon as man assumes the feeling of his wish fulfilled, his fourth-dimensional Self finds ways for the attainment of this end, discovers methods for its realization.

I know of no clearer definition of the means by which we realize our desires than to EXPERIENCE IN THE IMAGINATION WHAT WE WOULD EXPERIENCE IN THE FLESH WERE WE TO ACHIEVE OUR GOAL. This imaginary experience of the end with acceptance, wills the means. The fourth-dimensional Self then constructs with its larger outlook the means necessary to realize the accepted end.

The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But here is a technique that makes it easy to “call things which are not seen as though they were,” that is, to encounter an event before it occurs. People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things. But this simple formula for changing the future was discovered after years of searching and experimenting.

The first step in changing the future is DESIRE, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want.

Secondly, construct an event which you. believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — an event which implies fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant.

Thirdly, immobilize the physical body, and induce a condition akin to sleep by imagining that you are sleepy. Lie on a bed, or relax in a chair. Then, with eyelids closed and your attention focused on the action you intend to experience in imagination, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action here and. now.

You must always participate in the imaginary action; not merely stand back and look on, but feel that you are actually performing the action so that the imaginary sensation is real to you.

It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire. Also you must feel yourself into the action until it has all the vividness and distinctness of reality.

For example, suppose you desire promotion in your office. Being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination, immobilize the physical body; and induce a state akin to sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you. Put your imaginary hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the action.

You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you make elsewhere HERE, and the future NOW. The future event is a reality NOW in a dimensionally larger world and oddly enough, now in a dimensionally larger world is equivalent to HERE in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life.

The difference between FEELING yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure. The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a ladder. Then, with eyelids closed imagine that a ladder is right in front of you and FEEL yourself actually climbing it.

Desire, physical immobility bordering on sleep, and imaginary action in which Sell feelingly predominates HERE AND NOW, are not only important factors in altering the future, but they are also essential conditions in consciously projecting the spiritual Self.

When the physical body is immobilized and we become possessed of the idea to do something — if we imagine that we are doing it HERE AND NOW and keep the imaginary action feelingly going right up until sleep ensues — we are likely to awaken out of the physical body to find ourselves in a dimensionally larger world with a dimensionally larger focus and actually doing what we desired and imagined we were doing in the flesh.

But whether we awaken there or not, we are actually performing the action in the fourth-dimensional world, and will in the future re-enact it here in the third-dimensional world.

Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action, to condense the idea which is to be the object of our meditation into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, the attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to our attention, and in a few seconds they will lead us hundreds of miles away from our objective in point of space, and years away in point of time.

If we decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the realization of our desire, then we must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should the attention wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and distinctness of reality. The idea must be maintained in the field of presentation without any sensible effort on our part. We must, with the minimum of effort, permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Drowsiness facilitates change because it favours attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep, in which we shall no longer be able to control the movements of our attention, but a moderate degree of drowsiness in which we are still able to direct our thoughts.

A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and sleepy state, repeat over and over again like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such as, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, ” until the single sensation of thankfulness dominates the mind. Speak these words as though you addressed a higher power for having done it for you.

If, however, we seek a conscious projection in a dimensionally larger world, then we must keep the action going right up until sleep ensues. Experience in imagination with all the distinctness of reality what would be experienced in the flesh were we to achieve our goal and we shall in time meet it in the flesh as we met it in our imagination.

Feed the mind with premises — that is, assertions presumed to be true, because assumptions, though false, if persisted in until they have the feeling of reality, will harden into fact.

To an assumption, all means which promote its realization are good. It influences the behaviour of all, by inspiring in all the movements, the actions, and the words which tend towards its fulfillment.

To understand how man molds his future in harmony with his assumption — by simply experiencing in his imagination what he would experience in reality were he to realize his goal – we must know what we mean by a dimensionally larger world, for it is to a dimensionally larger world that we go to alter our future.

The observation of an event before it occurs implies that the event is predetermined from the point of view of man in the three-dimensional world. Therefore to change the conditions here in the three dimensions of space we must first change them in the four dimensions of space.

Man does not know exactly what is meant by a dimensionally larger world, and would no doubt deny the existence of a dimensionally larger Self. He is quite familiar with the three dimensions of length, width and height, and he feels that, if there were a fourth-dimension, it should be just as obvious to him as the dimensions of length, width and height.

Now a dimension is not a line. It is any way in which a thing can be measured that is entirely different from all other ways. That is, to measure a solid fourth-dimensionally, we simply measure it in any direction except that of its length, width and height. Now, is there another way of measuring an object other than those of its length, width and height?

Time measures my life without employing the three dimensions of length, width and height. There is no such thing as an instantaneous object. Its appearance and disappearance are measurable. It endures for a definite length of time. We can measure its life span without using the dimensions of length, width and height. Time is definitely a fourth way of measuring an object.

The more dimensions an object has, the more substantial and real it becomes. A straight line, which lies entirely in one dimension, acquires shape, mass and substance by the addition of dimensions. What new quality would time, the fourth dimension give, which would make it just as vastly superior to solids, as solids are to surfaces and surfaces are to lines? Time is a medium for changes in experience, for all changes take time.

The new quality is changeability. Observe that, if we bisect a solid, its cross section will be a surface; by bisecting a surface, we obtain a line, and by bisecting a line, we get a point. This means that a point is but a cross section of a line; which is, in turn, but across section of a surface; which is, in turn, but a cross section of a solid; which is, in turn, if carried to its logical conclusion, but across section of a four-dimensional object.

We cannot avoid the inference that all three-dimensional objects are but cross sections of four-dimensional bodies. Which means: when I meet you, I meet a cross section of the four-dimensional you — the four-dimensional Self that is not seen. To see the four-dimensional Self I must see every cross section or moment of your life from birth to death, and see them all as co-existing.

My focus should take in the entire array of sensory impressions which you have experienced on earth, plus those you might encounter. I should see them, not in the order in which they were experienced by you, but as a present whole. Because CHANGE is the characteristic of the fourth dimension, I should see them in a state of flux — as a living, animated whole.

Now, if we have all this clearly fixed in our minds, what does it mean to us in this three-dimensional world? It means that, if we can move along times length, we can see the future and alter it if we so desire.

This world, which we think so solidly real, is a shadow out of which and beyond which we may at any time pass. It is an abstraction from a more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — a more fundamental world abstracted from a still more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — and so on to infinity. For the absolute is unattainable by any means or analysis, no matter how many dimensions we add to the world.

Man can prove the existence of a dimensionally larger world by simply focusing his attention on an invisible state and imagining that he sees and feels it. If he remains concentrated in this state, his present environment will pass away, and he will awaken in a dimensionally larger world where the object of his contemplation will be seen as a concrete objective reality.

I feel intuitively that, were he to abstract his thoughts from this dimensionally larger world and retreat still farther within his mind, he would again bring about an externalization of time. He would discover that, every time he retreats into his inner mind and brings about an externalization of time, space becomes dimensionally larger. And he would therefore conclude that both time and space are serial, and that the drama of life is but the climbing of a multitudinous dimensional time block.

Scientists will one day explain WHY there is a Serial Universe. But in practice HOW we use this Serial Universe to change the future is more important. To change the future, we need only concern ourselves with two worlds in the infinite series; the world we know by reason of our bodily organs, and the world we perceive independently of our bodily organs.

I have stated that man has at every moment of time the choice before him which of several futures he will have. But the question arises: “How is this possible when the experiences of man, awake in the three-dimensional world, are predetermined?” as his observation of an event before it occurs implies.

This ability to change the future will be seen if we liken the experiences of life on earth to this printed page. Man experiences events on earth singly and successively in the same way that you are now experiencing the words of this page.

Imagine that every word on this page represents a single sensory impression. To get the context, to understand my meaning, you focus your vision on the first word in the upper left-hand corner and then move your focus across the page from left to right, letting it fall on the words singly and successively. By the time your eyes reach the last word on this page you have extracted my meaning.

But suppose on looking at the page, with all the printed words thereon equally present, you decided to rearrange them. You could, by rearranging them, tell an entirely different story, in fact you could tell many different stories.

A dream is nothing more than uncontrolled four-dimensional thinking, or the rearrangement of both past and future sensory impressions. Man seldom dreams of events in the order in which he experiences them when awake. He usually dreams of two or more events which are separated in time fused into a single sensory impression; or else he so completely rearranges his single waking sensory impressions that he does not recognize them when he encounters them in his waking state.

For example, I dreamed that I delivered a package to the restaurant in my apartment building. The hostess said to me, “You can’t leave that there,” whereupon, the elevator operator gave me a few letters and as I thanked him for them he, in turn, thanked me. At this point, the night elevator operator appeared and waved a greeting to me.

The following day, as I left my apartment, I picked up a few letters which had been placed at my door. On my way down I gave the day elevator operator a tip and thanked him for taking care of my mail, whereupon, he thanked me for the tip.

On my return home that day I overheard a doorman say to a delivery man, “You can’t leave that there.” As I was about to take the elevator up to my apartment, I was attracted by a familiar face in the restaurant, and as I looked in the hostess greeted me with a smile. That night I escorted my dinner guests to the elevator and as I said good-bye to them, the night operator waved good-night to me.

By simply rearranging a few of the single sensory impressions I was destined to encounter, and by fusing two or more of them into single sensory impressions, I constructed a dream which differed quite a bit from my waking experience.

When we have learned to control the movements of our attention in the four-dimensional world, we shall be able to consciously create circumstances in the three-dimensional world. We learn this control through the waking dream, where our attention can be maintained without effort, for attention minus effort is indispensable to changing the future. We can, in a controlled waking dream, consciously construct an event which we desire to experience in the three-dimensional world.

The sensory impressions we use to construct our waking dream are present realities displaced in time or the four-dimensional world. All that we do in constructing the waking dream is to select from the vast array of sensory impressions those, which, when they are properly arranged, imply that we have realized our desire.

With the dream clearly defined we relax in a chair and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. A state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention. Then we experience in imagination what we would experience in reality were this waking dream an objective fact.

In applying this technique to change the future it is important always to remember that the only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is THE WAKING DREAM, the predetermined action and sensation which implies the fulfillment of our desire. How the waking dream becomes physical fact is not our concern. Our acceptance of the waking dream as physical reality wills the means for its fulfillment.

Let me again lay the foundation of prayer, which is nothing more than a controlled waking dream:

1. Define your objective, know definitely what you want.

2. Construct an event which you believe you will encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant — an event which implies the fulfillment of your desire.

3. Immobilize the physical body and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, until the single sensation of fulfillment dominates the mind; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW so that you experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now to realize your goal. Experience has convinced me that this is the easiest way to achieve our goal.

However, my own many failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the movements of my attention. But I can, with the ancient teacher, say:

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.” Phil. 3:13,14

‘*’*************

Again I want to remind you that the responsibility to make what you have done real in this world is not on your shoulders. Do not be concerned with the HOW, you have assumed that it is done, the assumption has its own way of objectifying itself. All responsibility to make it so is removed from you.

There is a little statement in the book of Exodus which bears this out. Millions of people who have read it, or have had it mentioned to them throughout the centuries have completely misunderstood it. It is said, “Steep not a kid in its mothers milk.” (King James version, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk.” Exodus 23:19).

Unnumbered millions of people, misunderstanding this statement, to this very day in the enlightened age of 1948, will not eat any dairy products with a meat dish. It just is not done.

They think the Bible is history, and when it says, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk,” milk and the products of milk, butter and cheese, they will not take at the same time they take the kid or any kind of meat. In fact they even have separate dishes with which to cook their meat.

But you are now about to apply it psychologically. You have done your meditation and you have assumed that you are what you want to be. Consciousness is God, your attention is like the very stream of life or milk itself that nurses and makes alive that which holds your attention. In other words, what holds your attention has your life.

Throughout the centuries a kid has been used as the symbol of sacrifice. You have given birth to everything in your world. But there are things that you no longer wish to keep alive, although you have mothered and fathered them. You are a jealous father that can easily consume, like Cronus, his children. It is your right to consume what formerly you expressed when you did not know better.

Now you are detached in consciousness from that former state. It was your kid, it was your child, you embodied and expressed it in your world. But now that you have assumed that you are what you want to be, do not look back on your former state and wonder HOW it will disappear from your world. For if you look back and give attention to it, you are steeping once more that kid in its mother’s milk.

Do not say to yourself, ‘I wonder if I am really detached from that state,” or “I wonder if so and so is true.” Give all your attention to the assumption that the thing is so, because all responsibility to make it so is completely removed from your shoulders. You do not have to make it so, it IS so. You appropriate what is already fact, and you walk in the assumption that it is, and in a way that you do not know, I do not know, no man knows, it becomes objectified in your world.

Do not be concerned with the how, and do not look back on your former state. “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

Simply assume that it is done and suspend reason, suspend all the arguments of the conscious three-dimensional mind. Your desire is outside of the reach of the three-dimensional mind.

Assume you are that which you wish to be; walk as though you were it; and as you remain faithful to your assumption — it will harden into fact.

A DIVINE EVENT

December 22, 2013

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.”

The word “gospel” means “good news.” This is the good news, that Jesus is the Lord Jehovah and Christ is his power and wisdom. He is buried in us and he will rise in us. You will know of his rising because the day he rises in you, the very imagery of scripture will surround you, and you will know that you are the one spoken of as the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will discover who the son is, for you will not know that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit (by experience.) And you can only know your son from experience. David, the personification of humanity fused into a single being, stands before you and calls you Father

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.

A LESSON IN SCRIPTURE

December 22, 2013

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.

The birth from above came to Bennie that way. He was left with a photograph. This happened on the 20th day of October. Now, if the current record of order is correct (and it has happened to my friend Bob and myself), five months from now Bennie will experience the coming of God’s only Son, David, who will reveal him as the Father. I am basing my interpretation from what he told me, and I say the birth has happened to him. Why should the birth occur in the same manner to any two when God is infinite in his creation? Of all the children who come into the world, seemingly from the womb of woman, no two births are exactly alike, there is always something different.

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.

A MOVEMENT WITHIN GOD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-16-1967

If you find yourself miserable or helpless here, may I tell you that you are not condemned to the state by a deity outside of yourself, for everything that takes place in your world is but a movement within God.

We are told that in the very beginning the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and things came into being. Everything – your misery, your helplessness, your joy, your sorrow – no matter what it is, comes into being by a movement within God, and he is not a deity outside yourself. You are not a helpless being, but the operant power of God. Seated as you are now, you can move without moving physically because your eternal body is all Imagination. Called Jesus Christ in scripture, you are God’s power and wisdom. So if you find yourself in a place where you are miserable and feel helpless, it is because you either knowingly or unknowingly fell into that state, and not because of the condemnation of some deity outside of you.

Every conceivable situation that you could ever think of exists now as a fact in God but cannot be made visible to you until you occupy it, for you are God’s operant power. Everything in this world needs man as the agent to express it. Hate or love, joy or sorrow, all things require man to express it. We glorify or condemn the man, but he simply represents a state which God entered knowingly or unknowingly and remained there until the state was externalized. Everyone is free to choose the state he wishes to occupy. You imagined yourself into your present state. If you don’t like it, you must imagine yourself out of it and into another. It is all a matter of movement.

We are told that “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Collectively forming one glorious being, we conceived a play and speaking as one being, we said: “It is time for the play to begin.” Then individually we said: “I AM,” and the play began. We conceived a play containing every horrible thing as well as every lovely thing in the world. Every problem and its solution were conceived. In fact you cannot think of something that was not in that original conception. Then it was time to start, and saying simply: “I AM,” God took upon himself that which He had conceived, and your journey into this fabulous world began. So no matter what you are experiencing now, you are not condemned by some being outside of yourself, for you either wittingly or unwittingly fell into the state, be it good, bad, or indifferent. Now, how to move?

We are told in the very beginning of Genesis that “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” And in the Book of Joshua (which is the Hebraic name for Jesus) the Lord said: “Wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you.” Now, you can choose where you want the sole of your foot to tread, for the world is yours and all within it; but remember: whatever you tread upon will be given you!

When I speak of Joshua or Jesus, I am not speaking of any historical creature, but the Christ in you who is the hope of glory! I am trying to get you to realize that Jesus Christ is in you as your own wonderful human imagination. So when I say: “God became Man that Man may become God” I mean: “Imagination became you that you may become all Imagination.” Man has difficulty associating Imagination with God. Somehow the word “God” denotes some being that created the world, yet remained apart from it, but when I use the word “Imagination” it is my hope that the separation ceases to be. May I tell you: the whole vast world is all imagination. Our realists think they are nearer to the truth, yet they do not realize they are dictating nothing more than their imagination. They laugh at those who are mystically inclined, but may I tell you: leave them alone and go your way in confidence that what you are imagining you already are, you will become.

You imagined yourself into the state you are now occupying, and you can imagine yourself into any state you desire to express. No outside deity moved you into the state of misery you are now expressing; you did it yourself because you forgot who you are. You are the being who conceived every state in the beginning and deliberately started your journey by moving into a state, for you are Jesus, the Lord.

When I speak of Jesus, I am not speaking of some holy person as the world calls holy. The true story of Jesus is not as the churches teach. Their teaching is as far removed from the truth as Dante’s “Inferno” is from The Sermon on the Mount. Dante had the capacity to spin beautiful worlds together, but what a state he fell into when he wrote his words. He was supposedly writing scripture and that is what the churches follow, yet it is so completely different from the real, true story of Christ.

Jesus is the very being of everyone in the world. The word “Jesus” means “Jehovah saves,” and there is only one savior. Jesus is He who fell and He who saves himself. No one else saves you. You are saved by your own being. Becoming aware, you begin to remember; and remembering, you turn around and come out of the very play in which you sent yourself. And in the end all are united to form once again the single being that fell. The Lord God Jehovah, containing all, fell into diversity. In the end not one will be lost, but all will be gathered into the unity that is the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the story.

This week I received some beautiful letters. One was from a lady who said: “I heard you ten years ago and shortly after hearing your message I found myself in vision on top of the highest mountain in the universe. I was looking towards the horizon into a fantastic vastness without a shore. Clouds were below me, but as I looked into the distance I saw a little flicker of light, then a spark, and then others. As I watched the flickering lights round about me, I noticed that the cloud below me was making an imperceptible forward motion. Then a burst of white light came through the clouds and filled infinity. The clouds began to disburse, and pointing to the light, I said: “That’s Paul.” Then the light diffused and a burst of light appeared in living colors, and, pointing to it, I said: “That is Neville.” Then came a shower of golden needles which penetrated my brain, and I awoke to write it down. For years I have contemplated this vision, not understanding its meaning until last Monday night, when you spoke of the being of light who shoots his fiery arrows into the brains of those who are called.”

May I tell you: it’s the same story over and over again. You are the only Christ, the only Lord, the Only God and Father of all! Having conceived the play, you are playing every part and each in his own wonderful time will play the part of Jesus Christ, for in the end we will all know that we are God. Then you will hate no one, for you will realize that we agreed to play all the parts while hiding behind the masks we wear. Now completely masked, we think we are many and do not recognize ourselves as the one who conceived and predicted the play of life.

You are not now in a fatalistic state. You fell into the state because it was arranged in the beginning that you could fall into and move out of every state. So keep on going and complete the play, for when the play is finished, you turn around and return to the very being you were in the beginning!

Now, a gentleman wrote, saying: “I saw a man, about 26 years of age. He had golden curls on his head and seemed to be sunk into the ground. Two men appeared to be working on the top of his head towards the back of his skull. As I watched the young man raised his arm, and touching his head he put his hand into his skull. Curious, I came closer to see an enormous skull made of clay or some form of plastic, which was completely empty. Moving to look at the front of the man, the scene changed, and now I see his chin resting on the sands of the desert. The mask looked like those shown in Africa or Hawaii, where you only see the mask but never the wearer. I knew I was seeing a mask, but its wearer was unseen.”

That is the world! You don’t know it, but when you are looking at a seeming other you are seeing an intimate being, one you knew in the beginning, one you will remember when all of the masks are removed – for we are all wearing masks in order to play this play called life. In this world Imagination plays the role of the weak man, the strong man, the poor man and the rich man, for the roles were conceived in the beginning by Imagination, and Imagination is playing all the parts.

You, imagining, are God – who is all Imagination. That’s all there is. The universe is nothing more than Imagination creating while it is fast asleep! You and I move from state to state, either deliberately (by knowing what we are doing), or unintentionally (by falling into a state as we read the headlines of the paper). Listen to the radio or watch TV tonight, and although you may know none of the facts, if you accept what is said you will fall into a state and buy things you do not need. You will fill your house with all kinds of trivia that you have no room for because Imaginations is operating! Someone conceived a plan to get you to empty your pockets and buy their products, and you will, because Imagination is sound asleep. And Imagination will continue the journey until you turn around and head for home by becoming more and more awake!

Those who think they are so very wise in this world know nothing about Jesus. Only the seers, the mystics, know who He is. Only those who have seen the light he claims he is and know his form without seeing the face, know him. There are not thousands of lights, but only one vast, infinite light. If one takes on a white light and another multi-colored lights, it’s still the same wonderful light of Jesus only. There is only God who is playing all the parts, and in the end you will know that you are light, that you are Spirit, that you are God, from personal experience.

But tonight as you sit here, you can mentally shut out the facts of life and move anywhere in your imagination. Do that and no one looking at you physically can tell where you have mentally moved. And if you dwell in imagination where you would like to be, and see what you would see were you there, you will have moved within your own being. Persist and everything here will die because of your move within God.

In the beginning, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, saying: “Wherever you go and stand, I will give you.” You were given everything in the beginning, and one day – having finished the play – you will begin to awaken. Then I who came out first will stand there as an anchor for all to come through by performing the same deed. You will be drawn by a fiery brooding upon this wonderful mystery, drawn to the Risen Christ, who is formed out of all. As you enter we fuse, and the mortal you reassumes immortality. You fell into the mortal state in order to experience death, and when you turn around, you rise to become one with immortality.

I tell you: you are the Lord God Jehovah, who conceived the play and deliberately entered it. You did nothing wrong. It was an adventure and without adventure, what is life? If someone left you a billion dollars so you could be cushioned for the rest of your life here, they would be robbing you of your creative adventure. In the beginning you left all by emptying yourself of all that you were aware of being. Then you took upon yourself the form of a slave. Wearing a slave-mask right now, no one knows who you really are, and you cannot recognize those who you have known throughout all eternity.

Bennie came to my home a week ago, and sitting beside him I could see nothing but love pouring forth from him. I couldn’t see his face, for his skin is dark, but when I looked at Bennie all I could see was the being of love I knew in eternity. In the beginning we were all the elohim, which is a compound unity of one made up of others. Bennie has as dark a skin as I have ever seen on a man, and I am as fair as man can be, so you might think we came out of different beings – but these are only masks we wear. Bennie has turned around and now knows he is the light of the world. He knows he is infinite love.

May I tell you: when you see infinite love you will see Man. You will see he who is the gathering togetherness of all! I will know you by the light and you will know me by the light; but when we know each other as One, it will be as Love, and that is Man. Everyone is gathered into the human form divine! Not one will be lost, for in the beginning we agreed to dream this world into being, in concert. Then we went our separate ways, to falling into different states of consciousness and blaming others for the discords in our world. That’s all right, for one day we will return and all the discords will be resolved into perfect harmony, as we expand beyond what we were prior to the play.

You can put me to the test tonight by learning how to move. My brother Victor learned how to move into riches when he had nothing. Living on borrowed money and trying to operate a little shop on a side street, Victor would stand before one of the largest buildings in the island and see “J.N. Goddard and Sons” on the marquee, rather than the existing “F.N. Roach and Company”. This he did every day until the idea was fixed in his mind’s eye. Two years later, the business failed. (You may think that was wrong, but nothing is wrong in God’s name. We ate of the tree of millennium and fell into right and wrong). When the building was put up for sale, a man we hardly knew bought it for my brother, and the sign was changed from “F.N. Roach and Company” to “J.N. Goddard and Sons”.

What did my brother do? He moved his imagination. He had no money when he purchased the building in 1922. Now, in 1967, I don’t think you could buy the family out for $25 million. I own ten per cent of the stock, but I do not know its value. I came here to tell you, not how to make money, but how to operate the law of identical harvest so that if everything is taken from you tonight you can rebuild it tomorrow.

This is how it works. I imagined myself into what I am, and I can imagine myself into what I want to be. I am forever becoming what I imagine myself to be, be it good, bad, or indifferent. There is no deity on the outside who condemns and causes you to do what you are doing. You moved into the state you are now occupying either wittingly or unwittingly, for God and your own wonderful human Imagination are one. So when you say: “I and my Father are one” you are speaking of your human imagination!

I have been sent to clarify scripture and take off the barnacles off the story called Jesus Christ. This is a small beginning, but what does it matter? You who hear me will tell the story and bring it back to somewhere near its original form, for the story as interpreted by the churches of the world is not anything near the truth. This morning I read Buckley’s column. I enjoy his use of words and I find him quite an interesting fellow. Today he wrote about the Bishop of Canterbury, saying: “I don’t believe the good Bishop would recognize a Christian if he met one, or scripture if he read it.” I don’t always agree with Buckley, but this time I agreed, after reading what he quoted the Bishop as having said. Now, this is not only true of the present bishop but of all the bishops I have met, whether they call themselves cardinals or popes, for their rituals, beliefs, and teachings are so far removed from the true story of Jesus.

I am here to tell you that God became you! How? By seeing the mask (one like you see in Africa or in Hawaii) and identifying himself with it. Now disguised as that which God wears, you can no longer see who you really are. But I tell you: the being behind the mask you now see as your brother, your sister, your wife, your husband and children – is a part of the elohim who created the play and is playing every part. One day that being will take off the mask and you will resurrect and leave your empty skull. So I say to my friend who saw the mask with the empty skull made of plastic: the day will come when you will ascend with one of us whose mask is already taken off, and pointing to that skull, you will say of it: “I once dwelt there.” Then you will know as I do that you were never the mask you wore. And in eternity we will all know each other and all be enhanced beyond what we were, by reason of the journey that we made.

Tonight you try this. Test it. Learn how to move. The test is simple. Just like my brother, take a simple little thing like asking yourself: “What do I want?” Now, looking at the world as you now see it, if you had what you wanted, would you continue to see the world as it is now? I doubt it. It need not be a change from where you live, but if there were a change you would see the world differently and, naturally your closest circle of friends would see a changed you. Well, begin to move in God by seeing your world from a different angle, and let your friends see you there. You are the operant power and move in your own being.

If you move from where you are to where you would like to be, you could detect that motion only by a change of position relative to another object. Motion in itself cannot be done without some frame of reference from which it moves. If your income had just been increased to say $30,000 a year from your present income of less than $10,000, how would you feel? How would your present circle of friends see you? Would they know it? Would they discuss it? Would they speak of the change in your life? Tell them, and then eavesdrop and hear your friends discuss you as one who is now making $30,000 a year. That’s a motion in God and that movement will produce results! Everything in this world is nothing more than the result of a movement in God, which is a motion in your wonderful imagination. The slightest imaginal act that is a change (I don’t mean just an act, for you can imagine things you don’t believe), but if you imagine something you believe is a change, a thrill is sent through divine being. At that moment you have actually entered another state and made it alive and real in your world!

Try it tonight. It costs you nothing, not even a nickel. But may I tell you that when you stand in the presence of the one being who is drawing all towards itself, you are sent into the world to tell them your fantastic story; and if they do not apply what you tell them, they become disillusioned and hate you who invited them to dream. I am sent to invite everyone to dream consciously, to dream deliberately, for this is a dream world. They say that where he comes, he is always rejected, for he tells man: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will.” Anyone who makes that bold assumption and gets the confidence of those whose sphere he reaches, runs the risk of rejection, for when they try it and do not quite know how to do it, they become disillusioned and invariably hate the one who invited them to dream. That’s the risk every teacher who is sent must run.

But I tell you: it’s true anyway, and if one fails to bring their dream into being and becomes embittered, I say to myself: “How often must I tell them? Seventy times seven.” I must tell them until they really understand, and those who hear me, will carry my message forward. They will be heard and in the end we will all be gathered back into the one being, to know that we were that one being who conceived the play and took the plunge. So when we said in the beginning: “It is time for the play to begin,” not one of us failed to respond in the first person, present tense: “I AM”.

Now let us go into the silence.

A PARABOLIC REVELATION

December 22, 2013

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.”

Paul was trained to believe in an external, historical past of Israel. To him David was the king of kings. But when God revealed his son in him, Paul claimed he did not see anyone as flesh and blood. What man, believing in the historicity of scripture, could understand what Paul was talking about, when he was the one who formerly tormented anyone who would not accept the historicity of the Old Testament! But, when discussing the Messiah, Paul confessed that he could no longer believe in any historical character of the Old Testament. (The New, of course had not been written yet). Through revelation Paul knew who the Messiah was and who the Lord was. Seeing himself as the Lord, the one the world believes to be Jesus, Paul knew that what the world believed to be a mighty king was his only begotten son who was never flesh and blood. He knew the entire episode took place in the spirit, and said: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I discussed it not with flesh and blood.”

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.

A PROPHECY

December 22, 2013

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.

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 11-03-1967

Jesus Christ is the true identity of every one! His name, forever and ever is I am! Therefore, when you say I am, you are declaring your true identity! Do you believe that all things are possible to someone called Jesus Christ, but not yourself? If you do it is because you do not know who you are!

In 1929, believing Jesus Christ to be another, I stood in His presence. We embraced and I became the infinite love that I beheld, for at that moment I was incorporated into His body and became one with the Risen Lord.

Scripture tells us: “No one has ever seen God except his only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” This is true, for thirty years later God’s only Son made himself known to me. When I was incorporated into the body of God, I thought I was Neville. But thirty years later, when David of Biblical fame exploded from within and called me father, I knew I was God.

Although to me the David who said – “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee,”’ – lived 1000 B.C., and was not in any way related to me. Yet now I know the truth of the words: “No one has ever seen God until he who is in the bosom of the Father makes him known.” Only when my whole being exploded and God’s Son David appeared in the spirit and called me father, did I know my true identity.

Now I know from experience that I am Jesus Christ and that there is no other God, no other savior. I also know that you and I came out of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is to that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, and God and Father of all, that we return via these experiences which take place within.

Let me explain it in this manner. At the end of the 7th chapter of Luke it is said that Jesus forgave a woman of her sins, at which time those who sat at the table with him said: “Who is that who forgives sins?” Then he went from village to village, teaching the good news of the kingdom of God. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna went with him, providing for him out of their means.

The scholars of the great Interpreter’s Bible, considered the most scholarly work as of the moment, made this observation regarding this passage (and I am quoting accurately): “Jesus did not depend upon chance hospitality, but was supported by wealthy women.”

Can you believe that? They are speaking of the man who said: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will,” and: “All things are possible to him who believes.” Yet we are asked to believe that Jesus depended upon others! Why would these scholars say such a thing? Because they had not experienced Jesus Christ!

This is not a story of three wealthy women, but of those who saw the empty tomb. These characters are eternal. They are those who told what they had seen by relating their own experiences! It is said that the apostles who heard did not believe, as it seemed to them but an idle tale.

This is followed by a story that the Risen Lord walked with these women and – although they did not recognize him – he asked: “What is it all about?” and one replied: “Do you not know they crucified the great prophet who was delivered into the hands of the elders and the authorities?”

Then he said: “Is it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and then come into his glory?” And, beginning with Moses in the law and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Since it was late they asked him to remain, and while seated at the table he took bread, blessed and broke it. As he handed it to them they recognized him and he vanished out of their sight.

This is not a story of a man who while dining breaks a piece of bread. I am the bread of life. One day, like a seed bursting itself, the bread of life will erupt, and the plan of salvation contained within that seed will unfold from within.

When the bread of life breaks in you, David will call you Father in the spirit. Prior to this revelation you will stand in the presence of the Risen Lord, embraced and incorporated into his body. This incorporation is your baptism, for it is then that you are united; and remember: “If you have been united with him in a death like his, you certainly shall be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Notice the difference in tense. You have been united with him in death, and shall be united with him in resurrection.

The seed has been broken and is breaking in all. You came out of yourself to enter this world, and you will return to yourself enriched by the experience.

The word translated “suffer” in the sentence: “Is it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and then come into his glory?” means “to experience sensations.” In order for you to experience sensations, you emptied yourself of your Divine Being and accepted the limitations of a slave. You committed yourself unto death, to experience its sensations. Becoming one with death, you overcome it when you break this bread and are born from within; for unless this happens, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. When this happens, you will have lifted the son of Man to the knowledge that I am He! Unless you know that, you will remain missing your goals and continue to die in your sins.

There is no being talking to you from the outside, as Jesus Christ is not another. You and I fulfill everything said of him individually, because of our uniqueness. There is no one else like you and you cannot be replaced in the kingdom of God. Although what I tell you seems like a wild, wild tale it is true, for in my Father’s house are many rooms. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

Now, the women mentioned in Luke’s story are witnesses! You shall be my witness. I will take you into the Father’s house, where I will instruct you and tell you who I am. I can take you no farther. You must find the Father in you, and this you will never do while looking at me as another. When you see me, you see the Father; but I am not the Father when you look at me. You will find the Father only when his only begotten son, David, calls you Father!

The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint, and the New Testament interprets its prophecy. When this prophecy is experienced it is so unlike what appears to be on the surface, for the Old Testament is simply a foreshadowing – an adumbration – in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. When it happens in you (and it will) you will be born from above and discover God’s Son, who reveals you as his Father. The temple of your spiritual body will be torn from top to bottom and the Holy Ghost will descend upon you in bodily form as a dove. Then God’s plan of salvation will have fulfilled itself in you.

Men, thinking themselves so very good, are saying that Jesus was kept by wealthy women, and millions of people believe them. There are those in my own profession who will point to this passage and get wealthy women to support them – and they will. Believing they are doing God’s work, as you would milk cows. How could a man who said: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will,” depend upon wealthy women for support!

I have been offered diamonds, jewels of all kinds, money, my rent paid for five years at a time, all kinds of things – but I have never accepted any of these. I have paid all of my debts but not through gifts such as these. When they told me this was common practice, I assured them that I was not common and was not in the market for what they offered.

But the women spoken of in Luke were his witnesses, those who recorded their visions to support his claim; for one must have proof that everything said of Jesus Christ, in scripture, has been experienced by him. Should not Christ experience these sensations, these emotions, and then enter into his glory?

I have to have scripture confirmed, for I am not just talking to you on this level, but on every level of your being. One friend followed me from place to place, from level to level, as I taught scripture. In her letter she said: “At each lecture I became so excited my heart began to split, and at the very end I could hardly contain myself.” Are we not told: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened unto us the scriptures?” What else is there?

If you read a doctor’s report in the morning paper and remember what the same doctor reported a year ago about the same condition of the human heart, you would find that the doctor had completely contradicted himself. Or, perhaps he is only quoting another doctor. Well, if there are one-million doctors, do you know you will find one million different treatments for the same disease? Treatments are more fashionable than the clothes you wear, changing often – but the word of God is forever!

We are told: “I am from above. You are from below. You are of this world. I am not of this world.” If this is true, how can scripture be secular? He is telling you that he belongs to an entirely different region. That he is from the skull, where he was buried in the beginning of time, and not from the womb of any woman who bears children into time!

Everything you have ever done was done by Christ! He is your life and without Jesus Christ in you, you could not breathe. Allowing everything to happen, he will experience it all, as you!

Believe every precept literally, for it will be fulfilled literally. Believe that all things are possible to you and that you are what you want to be. Persist in that assumption and it will harden into fact. Having assumed the life you now live, no one can take it from you but yourself! You have the power to lay it down by no longer being conscious of it, and the power to pick it up again through consciousness.

You are the Cosmic Christ who nailed your power on humanity in six vortices as the six-pointed Star of David. At the moment of sheer ecstasy God began a good work in you, and He will bring it to completion as His predestined state unfolds from within!

Now let us go into the silence.

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 05-12-1969

In the 9th chapter of the Book of Mark, it is said: “All things are possible to him who believes,” and in the 19th chapter of the Book of Matthew we are told: “With God all things are possible.” Here we see God equated with the believer.

Seated here tonight you believe you are a man or a woman. You believe you are here, but are you willing to believe you can go beyond what your reason and senses dictate? You do not have to limit your power of belief to what your reasonable mind dictates. The choice and its limitations are entirely up to you, for all things exist in the human imagination and it is from your imagination that your belief stems. If you go beyond the dictates of reason, it must be via your imagination, and since all things now exist there, you can at any moment go beyond what your reason and senses dictate.

We have just had an eruption in the Christian world concerning the little icons people have made and worshiped for over a thousand years. The 115th Psalm described them as: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have eyes but do not see; mouths that do not speak; ears that do not hear; hands that do not feel; feet that do not walk and no sound is heard in their throats. Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them.”

In today’s paper the story is told of a famous actress who had an accident while in her Rolls Royce. She was injured, but not seriously and attributed her luck to the little icon she called St. Christopher. She is just like the one who made it and sold it to her, but she doesn’t know it. Don’t judge another by their worldly possessions. They received them through belief, but they do not know their very being is the one who created it for them. She believed her little gold icon saved her from a fatal accident. Nothing saved her but her belief in it. She bought and believed in her little icon because she does not know the one in whom she should trust.

All things are possible to him who believes and “with God all things are possible.” Here we see that God and the believer are one. When you leave here tonight, you expect to find your home where you left it. You will go to sleep there and believe you will wake up in your bed tomorrow morning. You believe you are clothed right now. I tell you: your capacity to believe is the human imagination, which is the only God. All imagination, you have restricted yourself by the body of sense and reason you wear. Reason says you are in this room, that you have a certain amount of money and can have no more unless you make a physical effort to get it. But you would wish you had more wouldn’t you?

Assume your wish through the sense of feeling. That assumption, subjectively appropriated and believed to be true, is faith. Can you believe in its reality? Knowing all things are possible to him who believes, can you persuade yourself that, although your reason and senses deny it, your assumption will make it so? Blake, in his wonderful “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” said: “I dined with Isaiah and Ezekiel and asked: Does a strong persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? and Isaiah replied: All prophets believe it does, and in ages of imagination a firm persuasion moved mountains, but many today are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.” Everything here was once only a desire, believed. This building, the clothes you wear or the car you drive were first a desire, then believed into being.

Yes, I believe there is a man named Neville. He may work for you to aid the fulfillment of your desire, if you believe you have it. Many men can and will come to aid you, even without knowing they are doing it, if you believe. You do not have to persuade others to help you; all you need do is believe you are what you want to be and then let the world (which is nothing more than yourself pushed out) go to work to make your assumption possible. I promise you: your desire will be fulfilled, for all things are possible to him who believes.

The late Robert Frost said: “Our founding fathers did not believe in the future, they believed the future in.” The most creative power in you is your power to believe a thing in. Our founding fathers did not believe that the passage of time would produce this country as they desired it. They wanted democracy, not a monarchy, and knew that sitting down and hoping it would come to pass wouldn’t do it – they had to appropriate it, so they simply believed it in. How? By faith. They subjectively appropriated their desire.

Let us say you would like to be in San Francisco now, but you don’t have the time or the money to make the trip. What do you do? You ignore the present moment and subjectively appropriate your objective hope by sleeping in San Francisco tonight. As you lie on your bed, look at your world through the eyes of one who is sleeping in San Francisco. You may wake in the morning to find you are still physically in Los Angeles, but while you slept changes were taking place which will compel you to make the journey. I tell you: you will always go physically to the subjective state you have appropriated.

Remember: all things are possible to him who believes, and with God all things are possible. Man believes that God created the world and all within it, but he does not equate God with himself, the believer. But the Bible equates God, the creator of everything, with one who believes. And belief need not be restricted, but can go beyond the evidence of sense and reason.

In the world you must go on the outside to light your way. You may light a candle, a lamp, or use electricity; but one day you will turn within to discover that you are the light of the world. Then you will know you are God, the light of infinite love, infinite power, and infinite wisdom. You will expand into these states as you break the barriers of reason and senses. I challenge you to examine yourself. Are you holding to the state you desire to experience? Test yourself, and as you do you are testing Christ, for he is God’s power and wisdom. It doesn’t cost anything to test him, so try it.

We are told that imagination speaks to us through the medium of dreams and reveals himself in vision. One night I was shown how to test myself. That night I found myself in an enormous mansion on 5th Avenue in New York City at the turn of the century. Everything that money could buy was in that mansion. Although I was invisible to the two generations who were present, I could hear everything they said. The older gentleman spoke, saying: “Father used to say, while standing on an empty lot, ‘I remember when this was just as empty lot,’ then he would describe the building he wanted to be there as though it were already solid and real.” Then the scene shifted and I saw the building, now complete, standing where only a moment before had been an empty lot. The grandfather was now standing next to his son and grandson and said: “I remember when this was an empty lot.”

This dream taught me a marvelous lesson. I was the grandfather, the son, and the grandson. It was up to me now to pass this knowledge on to other generations. While standing in a barren state you can say: “I remember when this was barren.” If it was barren, you are implying it is no longer so. Then you can – by exercising your inner sense of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch – occupy the state and allow it to externalize itself for you. I tell you, it does not matter what you have or who you are in this world, all things are possible to you when you believe.

You may believe in one or more of the ninety odd so-called saints which have now been demoted, but if you believe, they have served their purpose. Now those who formerly believed in icons on the outside must turn around and learn to believe in themselves. It has taken a long time, for more than a thousand years men have believed this nonsense. You don’t have to cover your head any more to enter the church – so was it ever necessary? You don’t have to believe in St. Christopher any more. It never was necessary; but man, in his child-like state, could not believe in himself, so he created something with his human hands to believe in and his belief produced itself. The icon did not do it for the individual. His belief did it for him.

All things are possible to him who believes and with God all things are possible, so is God not one with the believer? His name forever and forever is I am. Do you not know that you are? Knowing that, are you not saying: “I am”? If your name is John, you must be aware of it before you can say: “I am John.” I say: “I am Neville.” I may not always say “I am” before I say “Neville,” but I am aware of being Neville before I say the word. I have given my awareness of being a name. It is Neville. I do not have to repeat the words “I am” to define what I am aware of; but my awareness is God, the believer, and there is no other God.

Now, all things exist in the human imagination – not just the good things, but all things. Listen to these words from the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: “See, I, even I am he and there is no God besides me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal and no one can deliver out of my hand.” Who can kill but God? You may say: “I killed him,” but that is God’s name. Your own wonderful human imagination has the power to kill and make alive, to wound and heal and there is none that can deliver out of your hand, for there is no god besides your own wonderful human imagination.

As you are seated here you have the capacity to believe. You may believe in something stupid, but you believe and your belief will make it work. The one I speak of as God is your mightier self, yet your slave, for purposes of his own. He waits on you as indifferently and as swiftly when your will is evil as when it is good. He does it by conjuring images of good and evil just as though they were real. Allowing you to imagine whatever you desire, he projects it upon this screen of space in order for you to experience it. You can move into it so naturally and so easily you can forget the thoughtless moment when the seed was planted, and therefore do not recognize your own harvest.

The being you really are is the God in scripture who is your own wonderful human imagination. Can you leave this auditorium tonight in the deep conviction that you are what you want to be? Are you willing to assume its joys and woes? Your assumption is your subjective appropriation of an objective fact. That is faith and without faith it is impossible to please him.

Tonight, when I leave this building I will ride home with my friend. As we travel we will pass certain streets and see familiar objects because we will be traveling by sight. But when I walk by faith my steps are invisible, for I will be walking in the assumption of my fulfilled desire. Paul tells us to “walk by faith and no longer by sight.” We all know what it is like to walk by sight, but now we are called upon to break that spell and walk by faith.

I tell you it is possible to be anything you want to be, for the believer and the God of the universe are one. Don’t divorce yourself from God, for he is your I Amness. Believe in your I Amness, for if you do not you will never fulfill your desire. Only by assuming you already are the one you would like to be will you achieve it. It’s just as simple as that.

I am not saying it’s easy, but it becomes easier with practice. If I gave a Stradivarius to one who had mastered the violin he could lift me to the nth degree of joy, but if I put the same violin in the hands of one who could not play it, he would shortly drive me insane. It’s the same violin, yet one brings harmony while the other brings discord. You kill and make alive out of the same instrument, which is your own wonderful human imagination. You may make many discords until you 1earn how to play. We are here in this world of educated darkness learning to play the instrument which is God. You may not know anyone who would give you $10,000 right now, but if you believe a11 things are possible to God and you know that God is your human imagination, you can imagine you have the money, persist in your belief and you will have it. How, I do not know; I only know that according to your belief will it be done unto you.

Do you believe that all things are possible to God? And do you believe that he is your own wonderful human imagination? Knowing that God is all love, and you are capable of imagining unlovely things, you may not believe your imagination is God, but if that is true then God is not all-powerful. If you can imagine something that God cannot, then you transcend him. If God strikes only harmonious notes and you can strike chords that produce discord as well as harmony, then you are greater than he because you can do something he can’t. But I tell you: your own wonderful human imagination kills and makes alive, it wounds and heals, for all things come out of the human imagination. While learning to use and believe in your human imagination you may make alive that which you do not want. You may wound yourself in the process, but what you create in your imagination you can uncreate.

Everything can be resolved, even though while learning, horrible mistakes are made. Don’t condemn yourself for anything you have ever done, are doing, or may do, as you learn to play the instrument who is God himself and your own wonderful human imagination, for there is no other creative power.

What is now proved was once only imagined. My tailor uses his imagination to execute my suits for me. They must first be imagined before the cloth is cut. My tailor doesn’t take his scissors and start cutting the cloth in the hope that something will come out; he imagines it first. And when I sit in my barber’s chair he sees what ought to be on my head instead of what is there. Everything must first be imagined before it can become a fact, and that capacity to imagine is God.

Now, you do not observe imagining as you do objects in space, because you are the reality that is called imagination. You can observe this room, which was once only imagined, but you cannot observe the creative power that conceived it. The things created are seen, but you – the creator – are not seen, and you will never know you are He, until God’s only son, David, stands before you and calls you Father. Not everyone will accept this knowledge, for they would rather have their little icons. I’m quite sure this Italian actress who had the accident would not be interested in or believe my words, and she is not alone. There are hundreds of millions tonight who would not give up their little medals. I saw where Cardinal McIntyre had put his seal of approval on the reverse side of the little St. Christopher medal, thereby giving it his blessing. On one side is a face that never existed and on the other, a priest of the church gives his approval. What nonsense, yet the medals work because people believe they do.

It’s time for man to stop believing in something on the outside and start believing in his human imagination. It’s time to stop all the outside icons. “You shall make no graven image unto me, or have no other gods besides me.” You may have no education, no money or social background, and find it difficult to believe in yourself; but because all things are possible to him who believes, and with God all things are possible, you can go outside of your senses and believe anything into being. Test your imagination, and if it proves itself in performance, what does it matter what the world thinks?

Through testing I have proved imagination. I have found him and now I share my findings with another. He is called Philip, the lover of horses, the symbol of the mind. Knowing Philip loves learning about how the mind functions, I tell him that “I have found him whom Moses and the law and the prophets spoke – Jesus, the Messiah. I will take you to him.” You are here because, as Philip, you desire to know more about the mind and its functions. I can take you to Jesus by telling you who he is, but I cannot show him to you, for he is invisible.

Your I AMness is he. Say: “I am secure, I am wealthy, I am free.” This may not be true based upon your senses, but I am simply asking you to say the words, for the moment you do you are subjectively appropriating security, wealth, and freedom. Reason will try to take these from you, so I ask you to play a little game with me. Go through the door and walk as though you are secure, wealthy, and free. Sleep this night as though it were true. If you do, you will not fall asleep seeing the world as you did last night, you will see it differently. If this morning someone gave you a check for $20,000 and you deposited it to your account, you would be $20,000richer, therefore you could not sleep tonight as you did before. Now, without waiting for someone to physically give you the money, go to bed as though it were true. Put Christ to the extreme test. If all things are possible to God and if all things are possible to the believer, can you believe? I am not saying you will succeed the first night, or even the second. Having been trained to accept only what your reason and senses dictate, you may find it difficult, almost impossible, to believe what you could believe – but you can!

This morning as I was returning to this world I came upon a scene of shadows of beings. The first one was blind, unable to see the world round about him. The second one saw, but his vision was limited. The third saw more than the second, and the fourth could see, hear, and do more than the third. I awoke, saying to my friend Bob Crutcher: “With your talent to write, you could write a movie about this series of events. If you did, you would receive $3,000 for it.”

I knew that just like an actor I had identified myself with every shadowy being I had seen. Although shadows, I, the perceiving one, had assumed one after the other to find myself limited by the state perceived. As I assumed the first one I was totally blind. As the second I could see a little, and as the third a little more. Then I woke urging Bob to write it, to show how man is restricted by what he is wearing.

In order to play a part you must fee1 the part. As the blind man I had to feel my way about. When I put on another garment I could see and did not need to feel any more. With each garment I wore, I sensed more and more, and awoke urging my friend to show this in picture form in the hope that those who would see it would understand that man is only playing a part. The part need not be that which was given him at birth. He could pick a part and enter it at any point in time.

Right now you are playing a part. If you don’t like it you can change it. You could play the part of a man wealthier than you were twenty-four hours ago. It’s only a part for you to play, if you desire it.

Everything I am telling you is from the Bible. “I kill and I make alive. I wound and I hea1 and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. I, even I am he and there is no God besides me. I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior.” These are the words of God, revealed through his prophets of old. Their prophecy is fulfilled in the New Testament as: “Whatsoever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” That’s how easily you apply it, for an assumption, though false and denied by your senses, if persisted in will harden into fact.

I am telling you: you are God and there never was another. The being in you is God, and you and I are one, because there is only one God. In the end you will know that you and I are one, for you will discover you are the father of my son, who you will know to be your son. In fact, it will not be the son revealing you as the Father, but you, the Father, revealing your son.

Now let us go into the silence.

AN ASSURED UNDERSTANDING

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 06-13-1969

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he said: “I strive for you to have the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.” Now, you may think there is no mystery to Christ and believe – as any Christian believes – that Christ is Jesus, the son of God; but Paul doesn’t state that. What Paul is trying to do is change your fixed ideas of the past, in order for you to have the same assured understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ that he has.

Paul tells us that Christ is our human life. Now, if you took all of your experiences throughout all of the generations and condensed them into a single youth, it would be David. It is he in whom the Christ-seed flows. This is the same David who was anointed by the Lord and told that he would bring forth a son who would become the Lord’s son, being one with the Lord. In other words, David will bring forth a being who is his Father. That is the mystery.

Housed in you, a human being, is the Christ-seed, which will bud and flower into fulfillment as Jesus the Lord. Until David is formed in you, you can describe Christ in many ways, but “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” This is true, for the Holy Spirit brings to your remembrance all that you were told in the beginning.

To understand this, let us look at the parable of the prodigal son. In the story, the one who remained at home complained, because when the son who entered the prodigal state returned, the father killed the fatted calf, and gave him the robe and ring. He was given shoes for his feet and much was made over him. Then the father said: “Son, all that is mine is yours. It is right that we should make merry and be glad for this your brother was dead and he is alive, he was lost and is found.”

May I tell you: before you entered this world of tribulation and death you were God the Father, but you did not know it. You had to come into this experience in order to know that the world is yours and all within it. And, since it is all the Father’s, the only way you can know it is all yours is to become the Father. You could own the earth, but if you did not know everything in it was yours for the taking, you could die of starvation, not knowing how to appropriate it.

Before you came into this world you were, but you did not know that you were, so you were unaware of all that you owned. Leaving the awareness of being, you came here and became lost, as your consciousness wandered from state to state. But when your journey comes to its end, you will return to your heavenly awareness. Then the Father will embrace you and place his robe and ring of authority upon you. You will be given the fatted calf, which is a symbol of abundance. Shoes will be placed upon your feet to designate your freedom, for only slaves go without shoes. Then that which is personified as humanity will stand before you to reveal your Fatherhood.

This is not spelled out in the scriptures, but – as Blake said, (and he was quite the student of the scriptures): “That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.” The prophets and the apostles wanted to rouse man’s faculties to act. They did not spell everything out, so that man would dig and find the seed within himself.

Every child born of woman contains this incorruptible Christ-seed which possesses the power of self-expression and self-development. And every man is destined to mature and become his own father. If you come out of humanity, then humanity is your father; and if the symbol of humanity is David, and you come out of David, then he is your father – but not forever. Having planted the Christ-seed in humanity, in time it will bud and flower and bring to fulfillment all that was contained within it. And when humanity has done his job completely, you will look back to see David – he who fathered you in the world of time – standing before you and calling you Father. Then you will have matured, for you will have become your own father’s Father. That is the mystery of Christ; for the Lord, speaking through his prophet Samuel, told you that when you are gathered together and lie down with your fathers, “I will raise up your son after you who shall come forth from your body. I will be his Father and he shall be my son.” Coming out of your body, he seems to be your son, but he is the one who is made to say: “My Father is he who you call God, for I know my Father, as he and I are one.”

Everyone will one day discover that he is God the Father, whose son is humanity, brought into focus as a single being called David. I hope you understand, as I cannot spell it out any clearer. I am telling you of my experiences of scripture. I am not manufacturing them, adding to, or speculating about them, but explaining scripture as clearly as I possibly can; for I, like Paul, strive for you, that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.

The term, “God’s mystery of Christ” is used to express both the human race and the individual who attained the ideal David represents. The human race certainly is not ideal. It is scattered and always at war, but when the race is finished, its experiences are brought together into one single, beautiful being. While humanity is scattered its beauty cannot be seen, but at the journey’s end all of its horror is brought together and personified as a glorious youth called David, the son of God, who is God himself.

It was God who buried himself in humanity, and at the end God comes out of humanity. Coming out, he is humanity’s son; but when David appears, he is God’s son, revealing his father. When that Christ-seed blossoms and fruits in you, individually, you will share the fruit of your labor by telling everyone who will listen to you of the mystery of Christ.

You will notice in the prodigal son story that it was the second son who went out. It’s always the second son. Cain killed Abel, the second son. Isaac, Abraham’s second son, was offered in sacrifice to the Lord. Then we are told that the Lord loved Jacob, the second son, and hated Esau. It is said that Judah fathered the twins of Tamar, who – when the first one came out – the midwife put a red string around its finger for identification; but when he pulled the hand back the second son, Perez, came out. Read the genealogy of Jesus and you will find all of these second sons recorded there, for that second son is not a child which comes out of the womb of a woman, but the choice of God. You were chosen by God before the foundation of the world. Then you came out that you may know you are one with God and that there is nothing but God.

No matter how many billions of us there are here now and how many more will come, there are many who are left for a future age. They will come out eventually, but we will all be back as God the Father before we decide on another venture into the world of death. You are blessed because you are the second son and beloved by God. In the state of Jacob, God told you: “I am your inheritance.” How will you know this is true? You will know it when God’s son calls you Father, for when he does, you inherit God.

The story of scripture is the most fantastic, incredible story you can ever hear and accept. Can you believe that you will become your own father’s father? It’s incredible, but true, for that is exactly how the Book of Matthew begins: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Now, this genealogy is turned around, for the Bible is based upon a peculiar reversal of order. All through the Bible the second becomes the first, until the very end, when you find yourself coming out of humanity. Then humanity congeals and forms itself into a single being and stands before you and calls you Father.

I came out of humanity, for I came out of this garment of death and was born from above. Five months later I saw humanity -fused into a single being – stand before me and call me Father. Then I knew I had experienced that state in order to join the heavenly being called Jesus, the Lord. Now I am one with the personification of all those within whom the Christ-seed has erupted and flowered into fruitage, for David, the personification of the sum total of all humanity and their experiences, called me Father.

Dwell upon this and you will find David, he who was anointed with the destiny of lordship. Samuel was told to “Rise and anoint him.” Taking the holy oil, he anointed David in the midst of his brothers, and from that day forward David never lost a battle. Although David did everything man is accused of doing, the Lord never condemned him because David was always doing the Lord’s will. It was the Lord who said: “I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all my will.” Everything is the will of the Lord. “As I have willed it, so shall it be. As I have purposed, so shall it stand. My spirit will not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.”

In today’s paper I read where the mafia (whoever they are) wanted to sell the A&P stores a certain detergent, and when A&P refused, two managers were shot and over a period of two years their warehouses were burnt, costing the stores over $50 million. One young twenty year-old lad was caught. He was used as the front man, while his bosses, with their billions, remain hidden. This is what is known as approximate causes. The young man will be judged and sentenced for a job he received $100 for. But in his mind’s eye he was proud to serve those who were so mighty.

You may wonder what good can come out of that experience, but it will. Time will prove everything is good, for all things work for good to those who love the Lord. There isn’t a thing that the Lord cannot resolve, because he is the master artist. That which you and I judge as discord will be resolved into perfect harmony. Then one day every experience will stand before you, collected into a single youth whose beauty is so great you cannot believe he could be the sum total of all of the horrors you have gone through. David is the personification of the human race and his beauty is indescribable. And who is his father? I AM.

So when the question is asked: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” they answered: “The son of David.” Then he inquired: “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” In the ancient days a child always referred to his father as “My lord.” When David stands before you, he is standing in the presence of one called Jesus and calls you: “My father; my lord.”

Like Paul, I am telling you who I am, and yet you do not understand. But now I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, for I and my Father are one. Remain where you are now until you are clothed with the power to understand the things I have been trying to tell you, for I strive for you that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.

I have shared God’s mystery of Christ with you this night. The word “Christ” is used as the human race completely personified in the ideal form as David – and also of the individual who realized that ideal. Everyone in whom that ideal is realized becomes one with the one and only Jesus. The minute God’s mystery of Christ is realized in you, you are the Lord Jesus, even though you still bear your present identity, and those who know you by your given name will continue to see you as their friend. But when you take off this garment it will be for the last time, for you are the Lord Jesus. And while you are here you can put your garment down in what the world calls sleep and – as the Lord Jesus – do your work by stirring those whom you have drawn unto yourself, into a quickening state.

Night after night I try to open your eyes so that you will not continue in the sleep of death. Then I return to this garment called Neville and pick it up again because of my obligations in this world. Every night I enter that wonderful awareness, but I know my true inheritance will not be mine until I take off this garment of flesh for the last time. Then without loss of identity I will be one with the Lord Jesus.

You came into this world for the purpose of knowing what you possess. It was given to you, but you did not know it and cannot know it until you leave your heavenly home to enter the world of death. The son who remained was told: “All that is mine, is yours. It is fitting that we should make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive, he was lost and is found.” Unable to take the challenge, the eldest son remained with the father and served him well in his own wonderful, unconscious way, just like the functions of your body serve you in their own unconscious way. Right now what you had for dinner is being digested, assimilated, built into your body as bone, tissue and blood. What you cannot assimilate the body will unconsciously expel from your system. It’s all part of you, yet playing their unconscious roles. You and I came out to play conscious roles in the body of God, and that conscious role is to be God himself, for there is only God awakening and the awakening will go on forever. There was a limit as to how many he would bring into this world of tribulation and death at any one time. They are measured by the number of the sons of God which he chose in himself before that the world was.

Everyone is destined to discover the fatherhood of God within himself. He will know this when humanity forms itself into a single being and calls him father. Every human part one could ever play, when summarized, is David – that one being you will one day come out of to be born anew. Then, having matured, you will realize he is not your father but your son; for David, in the Spirit, will call you father.

I hope this is becoming clearer to you, for it is so important that you understand the distinction between the two uses of the word “Christ.” He is not only the one in whom the ideal was attained, but is humanity which contains the ideal in the form of a precious, incorruptible seed. That Christ-seed contains within itself the power of self-expression and self-development, and will germinate, bud, and flower into fulfillment in you. Then the sum total of all of your human experiences will stand before you in all his heavenly beauty and call you “father.”

The story of Jesus is an acted parable to instruct us. When Paul realized this he said: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you; before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Are you so foolish having begun with the spirit are you going to start worshiping some little being of flesh? Did you receive this understanding by works of the law, or by hearing the story with faith?” Well, the Christian world has ended with the flesh. They see Jesus as a body of flesh and blood, even though he tells us in the Gospel of John: “I and my Father are one and my Father is Spirit.” If you and your father are one and your father is spirit, are you not spirit? Are you who began as spirit going to end as flesh?

Today the entire Christian community worships a man of flesh and blood. But like Paul, I will no longer see any character of scripture as human; even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view I regard him thus no longer. Now I see the entire Bible as an allegory. Paul puts it quite clearly when he says: “The story of Abraham is an allegory.” As a devout Jew, Paul thought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived as men after the flesh; but when his eyes were opened he saw all scriptural characters as backgrounds – spiritual eternal states that culminate in the one in whom the ideal blooms. Then he knew he could not see the blooming ideal as flesh, when all the others are spirit. All of the characters in scripture are eternal states of the spirit through which the immortal soul passes and comes to that final state called Jesus, when the seed called Isaac which was planted in you in the beginning of time, comes to fruition. You will find that the second son is always sacrificed – Abel, Isaac, Jacob, one after the other, culminating in the one grand being who is God himself.

I hope I have made it clear tonight, for I strive for you that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ. It is my hope that when you hear the word Christ you will not think of some historical being who lived 2,000 years ago, but understand the great distinction between the two uses of the word: one representing humanity in its ideal form, and the other representing the man from that human race in whom the ideal was attained. Everyone in whom that ideal is attained is Jesus Christ, and you will all know you are he without any loss of identity. That’s the great mystery. So when you read the Bible in the future, keep this important division concerning the use of the word Christ in mind. At one minute you are speaking in the name of the Father, and in the next moment in the name of the son. Learn to discriminate between the two, and you will see how the same awareness is playing the different parts.

You are playing your part right now by doing God’s will. You will play it just as it has come out, and as it will be consummated. And remember: in spite of the horrors of the world the end result will be beautiful. You will see this beauty of the summary when David calls you “Father.” That was the plan before the beginning of time. In the state of Abraham we were given a preview of what we would experience, but we did not know that at the end we would become God himself.

How could man believe it, when the son who remained complained that he never once received one kid. He could not understand how, when the one who was so wasteful returned, he was given the fatted calf, the robe, and the ring, and shoes were placed upon his feet. He was told, but he could not understand.

Many years ago I had a vision to illustrate this point. I came upon an enormous sea of sunflowers, each with a human face and each flower rooted in the earth. When one swayed, they all swayed. If one smiled, they all smiled. They moved in unison, while I – certainly not as beautiful as they – knew I was freer than any of them. Not one could detach himself from that ground. Not one could frown if the others smiled. Not one could stand erect if the others bent over, for everyone moved in unison. They were the sons who never came out. But I, having left my heavenly home and gone through hell up to that vision, knew I enjoyed a freedom they could not conceive of. I was free to walk among them, smile, laugh, cry, and bend over, while they could not do one thing independent of the other. They did not know that everything was theirs for the taking. But you who have gone out from the Father will return to the Father as the Father, knowing that everything is yours. Then you will understand that 50th Psalm: “If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine. Were I hungry I would slay and eat.” Why ask any man’s permission to use that which belongs to you?

This is the story of scripture, but man is unaware of his inheritance until he is born from above. From then on he will not be concerned with making an effort to bring his desires into reality; he will know they already are real.

But until that day, apply the law towards any desire of your heart by assuming you have it. Sleep as though it were true and it will be drawn to you. Keep on applying the law towards these many ends until the Christ-seed bursts into bloom. And when it does, your fleshly body will come off for the last time for you will know you are the Lord Jesus. No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy Spirit comes he will bring to your remembrance all the things that I have told you by re-enacting the drama within you.

Having seen the preview of the play before the journey began, when the end comes you will enter the play to discover you are God the Father.

Now let us go into the silence.

AT YOUR COMMAND

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

SNELLGROVE PUBLICATIONS

NEW YORK

1939

At Your Command

By Neville

This book contains the very essence of the Principle of Expression. Had I cared to, I could have expanded it into a book of several hundred pages but such expansion would have defeated the purpose of this book.

Commands to be effective – must be short and to the point: the greatest command ever recorded is found in the few simple words, “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

In keeping with this principle I now give to you, the reader, in these few pages, the truth as it was revealed to me.

Neville

At Your CommandCan man decree a thing and have it come to pass? Most decidedly he can! Man has always decreed that which has appeared in his world and is today decreeing that which is appearing in his world and shall continue to do so as long as man is conscious of being man. Not one thing has ever appeared in man’s world but what man decreed that it should. This you may deny, but try as you will you cannot disprove it, for this decreeing is based upon a changeless principle. You do not command things to appear by your words or loud affirmations. Such vain repetition is more often than not confirmation of the opposite. Decreeing is ever done in consciousness. That is; every man is conscious of being that which he has decreed himself to be. The dumb man without using words is conscious of being dumb. Therefore he is decreeing himself to be dumb.

When the Bible is read in this light you will find it to be the greatest scientific book ever written. Instead of looking upon the Bible as the historical record of an ancient civilization or the biography of the unusual life of Jesus, see it as a great psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of man.

Claim it as your own and you will suddenly transform your world from the barren deserts of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan.

Every one will agree with the statement that all things were made by God, and without him there is nothing made that is made, but what man does not agree upon is the identity of God. All the churches and priesthoods of the world disagree as to the identity and true nature of God. The Bible proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Moses and the prophets were in one hundred per cent accord as to the identity and nature of God. And Jesus’ life and teachings are in agreement with the findings of the prophets of old. Moses discovered God to be man’s awareness of being, when he declared these little understood words, “I AM hath sent me unto you.” David sang in his psalms, “Be still and know that I AM God.” Isaiah declared, “I AM the Lord and there is none else. There is no God beside me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.”

The awareness of being as God is stated hundreds of times in the New Testament. To name but a few: “I AM the shepherd, I AM the door; I AM the resurrection and the life; I AM the way; I AM the Alpha and Omega; I AM the beginning and the end”; and again, “Whom do you say that I AM?”

It is not stated, “I, Jesus, am the door. I, Jesus am the way,” nor is it said, “Whom do you say that I, Jesus, am?” It is clearly stated, “I AM the way.” The awareness of being is the door through which the manifestations of life pass into the world of form.

Consciousness is the resurrecting power – resurrecting that which man is conscious of being. Man is ever out-picturing that which he is conscious of being. This is the truth that makes man free, for man is always self-imprisoned or self-freed.

If you, the reader, will give up all of your former beliefs in a God apart from yourself, and claim God as your awareness of being – as Jesus and the prophets did – you will transform your world with the realization that, “I and my father are one.” This statement, “I and my father are one, but my father is greater than I,” seems very confusing – but if interpreted in the light of what we have just said concerning the identity of God, you will find it very revealing. Consciousness, being God, is as ‘father.’ The thing that you are conscious of being is the ‘son’ bearing witness of his ‘father.’ It is like the conceiver and its conceptions. The conceiver is ever greater than his conceptions yet ever remains one with his conception. For instance; before you are conscious of being man, you are first conscious of being. Then you become conscious of being man. Yet you remain as conceiver, greater than your conception – man.

Jesus discovered this glorious truth and declared himself to be one with God – not a God that man had fashioned. For he never recognized such a God. He said, “If any man should ever come, saying, ‘Look here or look there,’ believe them not, for the kingdom of God is within you.” Heaven is within you. Therefore, when it is recorded that “He went unto his father,” it is telling you that he rose in consciousness to the point where he was just conscious of being, thus transcending the limitations of his present conception of himself, called ‘Jesus.’

In the awareness of being all things are possible, he said, “You shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass.” This is his decreeing – rising in consciousness to the naturalness of being the thing desired. As he expressed it, “And I, if I be lifted up, I shall draw all men unto me.” If I be lifted up in consciousness to the naturalness of the thing desired I will draw the manifestation of that desire unto me. For he states, “No man comes unto me save the father within me draws him, and I and my father are one.” Therefore, consciousness is the father that is drawing the manifestations of life unto you.

You are, at this very moment, drawing into your world that which you are now conscious of being. Now you can see what is meant by, “You must be born again.” If you are dissatisfied with your present expression in life the only way to change it, is to take your attention away form that which seems so real to you and rise in consciousness to that which you desire to be. You cannot serve two masters, therefore to take your attention from one state of consciousness and place it upon another is to die to one and live to the other.

The question, “Whom do you say that I AM?” is not addressed to a man called ‘Peter’ by one called ‘Jesus.’ This is the eternal question addressed to one’s self by one’s true being. In other words, “Whom do you say that you are?” For your conviction of yourself – your opinion of yourself will determine your expression in life. He states, “You believe in God – believe also in me.” In other words, it is the me within you that is this God.

Praying then, is seen to be recognizing yourself to be that which you now desire, rather than its accepting form of petitioning a God that does not exist for that which you now desire.

So can’t you see why the millions of prayers are unanswered? Men pray to a God that does not exist. For instance: To be conscious of being poor and to pray to a God for riches is to be rewarded with that which you are conscious of being – which is poverty. Prayers to be successful must be claiming rather than begging – so if you would pray for riches turn from your picture of poverty by denying the very evidence of your senses and assume the nature of being wealthy.

We are told, “When you pray go within in secret and shut the door. And that which your father sees in secret, with that will he reward you openly.” We have identified the ‘father’ to be the awareness of being. We have also identified the ‘door’ to be the awareness of being. So ‘shutting the door’ is shutting out that which ‘I’ am now aware of being and claiming myself to be that which ‘I’ desire to be. The very moment my claim is established to the point of conviction, that moment I begin to draw unto myself the evidence of my claim.

Do not question the how of these things appearing, for no man knows that way. That is, no manifestation knows how the things desired will appear.

Consciousness is the way or door through which things appear. He said, “I AM the way” – not ‘I,’ John Smith, am the way, but “I AM,” the awareness of being, is the way through which the thing shall come. The signs always follow. They never precede. Things have no reality other than in consciousness. Therefore, get the consciousness first and the thing is compelled to appear.

You are told, “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” Get first the consciousness of the things that you are seeking and leave the things alone. This is what is meant by “Ye shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass.”

Apply this principle and you will know what it is to ‘prove me and see.” The story of Mary is the story of every man. Mary was not a woman – giving birth in some miraculous way to one called ‘Jesus.’ Mary is theawareness of being that ever remains virgin, no matter how many desires it gives birth to. Right now look upon yourself as this virgin Mary – being impregnated by yourself through the medium of desire – becoming one with your desire to the point of embodying or giving birth to your desire.

For instance: It is said of Mary (whom you now know to be yourself) that she know not a man. Yet she conceived. That is, you, John Smith, have no reason to believe that that which you now desire is possible, but having discovered your awareness of being to be God, you make this awareness your husband and conceive a man child (manifestation) of the Lord, “For thy maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; the Lord God of the whole earth shall he be called.” Your ideal or ambition is this conception – the first command to her, which is now to yourself, is “Go, tell no man.” That is, do not discuss your ambitions or desires with another for the other will only echo your present fears. Secrecy is the first law to be observed in realizing your desire.

The second, as we are told in the story of Mary, is to “Magnify the Lord.” We have identified the Lord as your awareness of being. Therefore, to ‘magnify the Lord’ is to revalue or expand one’s present conception of one’s self to the point where this revaluation becomes natural. When this naturalness is attained you give birth by becoming that which you are one with in consciousness.

The story of creation is given us in digest form in the first chapter of John.

“In the beginning was the word.” Now, this very second, is the ‘beginning’ spoken of. It is the beginning of an urge – a desire. ‘The word’ is the desire swimming around in your consciousness – seeking embodiment. The urge of itself has no reality, For, “I AM” or the awareness of being is the only reality. Things live only as long as I AM aware of being them; so to realize one’s desire, the second line of this first verse of John must be applied. That is, “And the word was with God.” The word, or desire, must be fixed or united with consciousness to give it reality. The awareness becomes aware of being the thing desired, thereby nailing itself upon the form or conception – and giving life unto its conception – or resurrecting that which was heretofore a dead or unfulfilled desire. “Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established on earth.”

This agreement is never made between two persons. It is between the awareness and the thing desired. You are now conscious of being, so you are actually saying to yourself, without using words, “I AM.” Now, if it is a state of health that you are desirous of attaining, before you have any evidence of health in your world, you begin to FEEL yourself to be healthy. And the very second the feeling “I AM healthy” is attained the two have agreed. That is, I AM and health have agreed to be one and this agreement ever results in the birth of a child which is the thing agreed upon – in this case, health. And because I made the agreement I express the thing agreed. So you can see why Moses stated, “I AM hath sent me.” For what being, other than I AM could send you into expression? None – for “I AM the way – Beside me there is no other.” If you take the wings of the morning and fly into the uttermost parts of the world or if you make your bed in Hell, you will still be aware of being. You are ever sent into expression by your awareness and your expression is ever that which you are aware of being.

Again, Moses stated, “I AM that I AM.” Now here is something to always bear in mind. You cannot put new wine in old bottles or new patches upon old garments. That is; you cannot take with you into the new consciousness any part of the old man. All of your present beliefs, fears and limitations are weights that bind you to your present level of consciousness. If you would transcend this level you must leave behind all that is now your present self, or conception of yourself. To do this you take your attention away from all that is now your problem or limitation and dwell upon just being. That is; you say silently but feeling to yourself, “I AM. Do not condition this ‘awareness’ as yet. Just declare yourself to be, and continue to do so, until you are lost in the feeling of just being – faceless and formless. When this expansion of consciousness is attained, then, within this formless deep of yourself give form to the new conception by FEELING yourself to be THAT which you desire to be.

You will find within this deep of yourself all things to be divinely possible. Everything in the world which you can conceive of being, is to you, within this present formless awareness, a most natural attainment.

The invitation given us in the Scriptures is – “to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord.” The ‘body’ being your former conception of yourself and ‘the Lord’ – your awareness of being. This is what is meant when Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again for except ye be born again ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.” That is; except you leave behind you your present conception of yourself and assume the nature of the new birth, you will continue to out-picture your present limitations.

The only way to change your expressions of life is to change your consciousness. For consciousness is the reality that eternally solidifies itself in the things round about you. Man’s world in its every detail is his consciousness out-pictured. You can no more change your environment, or world, by destroying things than you can your reflection by destroying the mirror. Your environment, and all within it, reflects that which you are in consciousness. As long as you continue to be that in consciousness so long will you continue to out-picture it in your world.

Knowing this, begin to revalue yourself. Man has placed too little value upon himself. In the Book of Numbers you will read, “In that day there were giants in the land; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers. And we were in their sight as grasshoppers.” This does not mean a time in the dim past when man had the stature of giants. Today is the day, the eternal now when conditions round about you have attained the appearance of giants (such as unemployed, the armies of your enemy, your problems and all things that seem to threaten you) those are the giant that make you feel yourself to be a grasshopper. But, you are told, you were first, in your own sight a grasshopper and because of this you were to the giants – a grasshopper. In other words, you can only be to others what you are first to yourself. Therefore, to revalue yourself and begin to feel yourself to be the giant, a center of power, is to dwarf these former giants and make of them grasshoppers. “All the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the armies of Heaven and among all the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, nor say unto him, “What doest thou’?” This being spoken of is not the orthodox God sitting in space but the one and only God – the everlasting father, your awareness of being. So awake to the power that you are, not as man, but as your true self, a faceless, formless awareness, and free yourself from your self imposed prison.

“I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they will follow me.” Awareness is the good shepherd. What I am aware of being, is the ‘sheep’ that follow me. So good a ‘shepherd’ is your awareness that it has never lost one of the ‘sheep’ that you are aware of being.

I am a voice calling in the wilderness of human confusion for such as I am aware of being, and never shall there come a time when that which I am convinced that I am shall fail to find me. “I AM” is an open door for all that I am to enter. Your awareness of being is lord and shepherd of your life. So, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” is seen in its true light now to be your consciousness. You could never be in want of proof or lack the evidence of that which you are aware of being.

This being true, why not become aware of being great; God-loving; wealthy; healthy; and all attributes that you admire?

It is just as easy to possess the consciousness of these qualities as it is to possess their opposites for you have not your present consciousness because of your world. On the contrary, your world is what it is because of your present consciousness. Simple, is it not? Too simple in fact for the wisdom of man that tries to complicate everything.

Paul said of this principle, “It is to the Greeks” (or wisdom of this world) “foolishness.” “And to the Jews” (or those who look for signs) “a stumbling block”; with the result, that man continues to walk in darkness rather than awake to the being that he is. Man has so long worshipped the images of his own making that at first he finds this revelation blasphemous, since it spells death to all his previous beliefs in a God apart from himself. This revelation will bring the knowledge that “I and my father are one but my father is greater than I.” You are one with your present conception of yourself. But you are greater than that which you are at present aware of being.

Before man can attempt to transform his world he must first lay the foundation – “I AM the Lord.” That is, man’s awareness, his consciousness of being is God. Until this is firmly established so that no suggestion or argument put forward by others can shake it, he will find himself returning to the slavery of his former beliefs. “If ye believe not that I AM he, ye shall die in your sins.” That is, you shall continue to be confused and thwarted until you find the cause of your confusion. When you have lifted up the son of man then shall you know that I AM he, that is, that I, John Smith, do nothing of myself, but my father, or that state of consciousness which I am now one with does the works.

When this is realized every urge and desire that springs within you shall find expression in your world. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me.” The “I” knocking at the door is the urge.

The door is your consciousness. To open the door is to become one with that that which is knocking by FEELING oneself to be the thing desired. To feel one’s desire as impossible is to shut the door or deny this urge expression. To rise in consciousness to the naturalness of the thing felt is to swing wide the door and invite this one into embodiment.

That is why it is constantly recorded that Jesus left the world of manifestation and ascended unto his father. Jesus, as you and I, found all things impossible to Jesus, as man. But having discovered his father to be the state of consciousness of the thing desired, he but left behind him the “Jesus consciousness” and rose in consciousness to that state desired and stood upon it until he became one with it. As he made himself one with that, he became that in expression.

This is Jesus simple message to man: Men are but garments that the impersonal being, I AM, the presence that men call God – dwells in. Each garment has certain limitations. In order to transcend these limitations and give expression to that which, as man – John Smith – you find yourself incapable of doing, you take your attention away from your present limitations, or John Smith conception of yourself, and merge yourself in the feeling ofbeing that which you desire. Just how this desire or newly attained consciousness will embody itself, no man knows. For I, or the newly attained consciousness, has ways that ye know not of; its ways are past finding out. Do not speculate as to the HOW of this consciousness embodying itself, for no man is wise enough to know the how. Speculation is proof that you have not attained to the naturalness of being the thing desired and so are filled with doubts.

You are told, “He who lacks wisdom let him ask of God, that gives to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given unto him. But let him ask not doubting for he who doubts is as a wave of the sea that is tossed and battered by the winds. And let not such a one think that he shall receive anything from the Lord.” You can see why this statement is made, for only upon the rock of faith can anything be established. If you have not the consciousness of the thing you have not the cause or foundation upon which thing is erected.

A proof of this established consciousness is given you in the words, “Thank you, father.” When you come into the joy of thanksgiving so that you actually feel grateful for having received that which is not yet apparent to the senses, you have definitely become one in consciousness with the thing for which you gave thanks. God (your awareness) is not mocked. You are ever receiving that which you are aware of being and no man gives thanks for something which he has not received. “Thank you father” is not, as it is used by many today a sort of magical formula. You need never utter aloud the words, “Thank you, father.” In applying this principle as you rise in consciousness to the point where you are really grateful and happy for having received the thing desired, you automatically rejoice and give thanks inwardly. You have already accepted the gift which was but a desire before you rose in consciousness, and your faith is now the substance that shall clothe your desire.

This rising in consciousness is the spiritual marriage where two shall agree upon being one and their likeness or image is established on earth.

“For whatsoever ye ask in my name the same give I unto you.” ‘Whatsoever’ is quite a large measure. It is the unconditional. It does not state if society deems it right or wrong that you should ask it, it rests with you. Do you really want it? Do you desire it? That is all that is necessary. Life will give it to you if you ask ‘in his name.’

His name is not a name that you pronounce with the lips. You can ask forever in the name of God or Jehovah or Christ Jesus and you will ask in vain. ‘Name’ means nature; so, when you ask in the nature of a thing, results ever follow. To ask in the name is to rise in consciousness and become one in nature with the thing desired, rise in consciousness to the nature of the thing, and you will become that thing in expression. Therefore, “what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall receive them.”

Praying, as we have shown you before, is recognition – the injunction to believe that ye receive is first person, present tense. This means that you must be in the nature of the things asked for before you can receive them.

To get into the nature easily, general amnesty is necessary. We are told, “Forgive if ye have aught against any, that your father also, which is in Heaven, may forgive you. But if ye forgive not, neither will your father forgive you.” This may seem to be some personal God who is pleased or displeased with your actions but this is not the case.

Consciousness, being God, if you hold in consciousness anything against man, you are binding that condition in your world. But to release man from all condemnation is to free yourself so that you may rise to any level necessary; there is therefore, no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, a very good practice before you enter into your meditation is first to free every man in the world from blame. For LAW is never violated and you can rest confidently in the knowledge that every man’s conception of himself is going to be his reward. So you do not have to bother yourself about seeing whether or not man gets what you consider he should get. For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself.

This brings us to that much abused statement of the Bible on tithing. Teachers of all kinds have enslaved man with this affair of tithing, for not themselves understanding the nature of tithing and being themselves fearful of lack, they have led their followers to believe that a tenth part of their income should be given to the Lord. Meaning, as they make very clear, that, when one gives a tenth part of his income to their particular organization he is giving his “tenth part” to the Lord – (or is tithing). But remember, “I AM” the Lord.” Your awareness of being is the God that you give to and you ever give in this manner.

Therefore when you claim yourself to be anything, you have given that claim or quality to God. And your awareness of being, which is no respecter of persons, will return to you pressed down, shaken together, and running over with that quality or attribute which you claim for yourself.

Awareness of being is nothing that you could ever name. To claim God to be rich; to be great; to be love; to be all wise; is to define that which cannot be defined. For God is nothing that could ever be named.

Tithing is necessary and you do tithe with God. But from now on give to the only God and see to it that you give him the quality that you desire as man to express by claiming yourself to be the great, the wealthy, the loving, the all wise.

Do not speculate as to how you shall express these qualities or claims, for life has a way that you, as man, know not of. Its ways are past finding out. But, I assure you, the day you claim these qualities to the point of conviction, your claims will be honored. There is nothing covered that shall not be uncovered. That which is spoken in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetops. That is, your secret convictions of yourself – these secret claims that no man knows of, when really believed, will be shouted from the housetops in your world. For your convictions of yourself are the words of the God within you, which words are spirit and cannot return unto you void but must accomplish whereunto they are sent.

You are at this moment calling out of the infinite that which you are now conscious of being. And not one word or conviction will fail to find you.

“I AM” the vine and ye are the branches.” Consciousness is the ‘vine,’ and those qualities which you are now conscious of being are as ‘branches’ that you feed and keep alive. Just as a branch has no life except it be rooted in the vine, so likewise things have no life except you be conscious of them. Just as a branch withers and dies if the sap of the vine ceases to flow towards it, so do things in your world pass away if you take your attention from them, because your attention is as the sap of life that keeps alive and sustains the things of your world.

To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem.

For instance; if you were imprisoned no man would have to tell you that you should desire freedom. Freedom, or rather the desire of freedom would be automatic. So why look behind the four walls of your prison bars? Take your attention from being imprisoned and begin to feel yourself to be free. FEEL it to the point where it is natural – the very second you do so, those prison bars will dissolve. Apply this same principle to any problem.

I have seen people who were in debt up to their ears apply this principle and in the twinkling of an eye debts that were mountainous were removed. I have seen those whom doctors had given up as incurable take their attention away from their problem of disease and begin to feel themselves to be well in spite of the evidence of their sense to the contrary. In no time at all this so called “incurable disease” vanished and left no scar.

Your answer to, “Whom do you say that I AM”? [sic] ever determines your expression. As long as you are conscious of being imprisoned or diseased, or poor, so long will you continue to out-picture or express these conditions.

When man realized that he is now that which he is seeking and begins to claim that he is, he will have the proof of his claim. This cue is given you in words, “Whom seek ye?” And they answered, “Jesus.” And the voice said, “I am he.” ‘Jesus’ here means salvation or savior. You are seeking to be salvaged from that which is not your problem.

“I am” is he that will save you. If you are hungry, your savior is food. If you are poor, your savior is riches. If you are imprisoned, your savior is freedom. If you are diseased, it will not be a man called Jesus who will save you, but health will become your savior. Therefore, claim “I am he,” in other words, claim yourself to be the thing desired. Claim it in consciousness – not in words – and consciousness will reward you with your claim. You are told, “You shall find me when you FEEL after me.” Well, FEEL after that quality in consciousness until you FEEL yourself to be it. When you lose yourself in the feeling of being it, the quality will embody itself in your world.

You are healed from your problem when you touch the solution of it. “Who has touched me? For I perceive virtue is gone out of me.” Yes, the day you touch this being within you – FEELING yourself to be cured or healed, virtues will come out of your very self and solidify themselves in your world as healings.

It is said, ‘You believe in God. Believe also in me for I am he.” Have the faith of God. “He made himself one with God and found it not robbery to do the works of God.” Go you and do likewise. Yes, begin to believe yourawareness, your consciousness of being to be God. Claim for yourself all the attributes that you have heretofore given an external God and you will begin to express these claims.

“For I am not a God afar off. I am nearer than your hands and feet – nearer than your very breathing.” I am your awareness of being. I am that in which all that I shall ever be aware of being shall begin and end. “For before the world was I AM; and when the world shall cease to be, I AM; before Abraham was, I AM.” This I AM is your awareness.

“Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.” ‘The Lord,’ being your consciousness, except that which you seek is first established in your consciousness, you will labor in vain to find it. All things must begin and end in consciousness.

So, blessed indeed is the man that trusteth in himself – for man’s faith in God will ever be measured by his confidence in himself. You believe in a God, believe also in ME.

Put not your trust in men for men but reflect the being that you are, and can only bring to you or do unto you that which you have first done unto yourself.

“No man taketh away my life, I lay it down myself.” I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.

No matter what happens to man in this world it is never an accident. It occurs under the guidance of an exact and changeless Law.

“No man” (manifestation) “comes unto me except the father within me draw him,” and “I and my father are one.” Believe this truth and you will be free. Man has always blamed others for that which he is and will continue to do so until he find himself as cause of all. “I AM” comes not to destroy but to fulfill. “I AM,” the awareness within you, destroys nothing but ever fill full the molds or conception one has of one’s self.

It is impossible for the poor man to find wealth in this world no matter how he is surrounded with it until he first claims himself to be wealthy. For signs follow, they do not precede. To constantly kick and complain against the limitations of poverty while remaining poor in consciousness is to play the fool’s game. Changes cannot take place from that level of consciousness for life in constantly out-picturing all levels.

Follow the example of the prodigal son. Realize that you, yourself brought about this condition of waste and lack and make the decision within yourself to rise to a higher level where the fatted calf, the ring, and the robe await your claim.

There was no condemnation of the prodigal when he had the courage to claim this inheritance as his own. Others will condemn us only as long as we continue in that for which we condemn ourselves. So: “Happy is the man that condemneth himself not in that which he alloweth.” For to life nothing is condemned. All is expressed.

Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor; strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself.

The measurements of right and wrong belong to man alone. To life there is nothing right or wrong. As Paul stated in his letters to the Romans: “I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” Stop asking yourself whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire. You, as man, did not create the desire. Your desires are ever fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be.

When a man is hungry, (without thinking) he automatically desires food. When imprisoned, he automatically desires freedom and so forth. Your desires contain within themselves the plan of self-expression.

So leave all judgments out of the picture and rise in consciousness to the level of your desire and make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now. For: “My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Have faith in this unseen claim until the conviction is born within you that it is so. Your confidence in this claim will pay great rewards. Just a little while and he, the thing desired, will come. But without faith it is impossible to realize anything. Through faith the worlds were framed because “faith is the substance of the thing hoped for – the evidence of the thing not yet seen.”

Don’t be anxious or concerned as to results. They will follow just as surely as day follows night.

Look upon your desires – all of them – as the spoken words of God, and every word or desire a promise. The reason most of us fail to realize our desires is because we are constantly conditioning them. Do not condition your desire. Just accept it as it comes to you. Give thanks for it to the point that you are grateful for having already received it – then go about your way in peace.

Such acceptance of your desire is like dropping seed – fertile seed – into prepared soil. For when you can drop the thing desired in consciousness, confident that it shall appear, you have done all that is expected to you. But, to be worried or concerned about the HOW of your desire maturing is to hold these fertile seeds in a mental grasp, and, therefore, never to have dropped them in the soil of confidence.

The reason men condition their desires is because they constantly judge after the appearance of being and see the things as real – forgetting that the only reality is the consciousness back of them.

To see things as real is to deny that all things are possible to God. The man who is imprisoned and sees his four walls as real is automatically denying the urge or promise of God within him of freedom.

A question often asked when this statement is made is; If one’s desire is a gift of God how can you say that if one desires to kill a man that such a desire is good and therefore God sent? In answer to this let me say that no man desires to kill another. What he does desire is to be freed from such a one. But because he does not believe that the desire to be free from such a one contains within itself the powers of freedom, he conditions that desire and sees the only way to express such freedom is to destroy the man – forgetting that the life wrapped within the desire has ways that he, as man, knows not of. Its ways are past finding out. Thus man distorts the gifts of God through his lack of faith.

Problems are the mountains spoken of that can be removed if one has but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed. Men approach their problem as did the old lady who, on attending service and hearing the priest say, “If you had but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed you would say unto yonder mountain ‘be thou removed’ and it shall be removed and nothing is impossible to you.”

That night as she said her prayers, she quoted this part of the scriptures and retired to bed in what she thought was faith. On arising in the morning she rushed to the window and exclaimed: “I knew that old mountain would still be there.”

For this is how man approaches his problem. He knows that they are still going to confront him. And because life is no respecter of persons and destroys nothing, it continues to keep alive that which he is conscious of being.

Things will disappear only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it still remains a fact that consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness. So the heavenly state you are seeking will be found only in consciousness, for the kingdom of heaven is within you. As the will of heaven is ever done on earth you are today living in the heaven that you have established within you. For here on this very earth your heaven reveals itself. The kingdom of heaven really is at hand. NOW is the accepted time. So create a new heaven, enter into a new state of consciousness and a new earth will appear.

“The former things shall pass away. They shall not be remembered not come into mind any more. For behold, I,” (your consciousness) “come quickly and my reward is with me.”

I am nameless but will take upon myself every name (nature) that you call me. Remember it is you, yourself, that I speak of as ‘me.’ So every conception that you have of yourself – that is every deep conviction – you have of yourself is that which you shall appear as being – for I AM not fooled; God is not mocked.

Now let me instruct you in the art of fishing. It is recorded that the disciples fished all night and caught nothing. Then Jesus came upon the scene and told them to cast their nets in once more, into the same waters that only a moment before were barren – and this time their nets were bursting with the catch.

This story is taking place in the world today right within you, the reader. For you have within you all the elements necessary to go fishing. But until you find that Jesus Christ, (your awareness) is Lord, you will fish, as did these disciples, in the night of human darkness. That is, you will fish for THINGS thinking things to be real and will fish with the human bait – which is a struggle and an effort – trying to make contact with this one and that one: trying to coerce this being or the other being; and all such effort will be in vain. But when you discover your awareness of being to be Christ Jesus you will let him direct your fishing. And you will fish in consciousness for the things that you desire. For your desire – will be the fish that you will catch, because your consciousness is the only living reality you will fish in the deep waters of consciousness.

If you would catch that which is beyond your present capacity you must launch out into deeper waters, for, within your present consciousness such fish or desires cannot swim. To launch out into deeper waters, you leave behind you all that is now your present problem, or limitation, by taking your ATTENTION AWAY from it. Turn your back completely upon every problem and limitation that you now possess.

Dwell upon just being by saying, “I AM,” “I AM,” “I AM,” to yourself. Continue to declare to yourself that you just are. Do not condition this declaration, just continue to FEEL yourself to be and without warning you will find yourself slipping the anchor that tied you to the shallow of your problems and moving out into the deep.

This is usually accompanied with the feeling of expansion. You will FEEL yourself expand as though you were actually growing. Don’t be afraid, for courage is necessary. You are not going to die to anything by your former limitations, but they are going to die as you move away from them, for they live only in your consciousness. In this deep or expanded consciousness you will find yourself to be a power that you had never dreamt of before.

The things desired before you shoved off from the shores of limitation are the fish you are going to catch in this deep. Because you have lost all consciousness of your problems and barriers, it is now the easiest thing in the world to FEEL yourself to be one with the things desired.

Because I AM (your consciousness) is the resurrection and the life, you must attach this resurrecting power that you are to the thing desired if you would make it appear and live in your world. Now you begin to assume the nature of the thing desired by feeling, “I AM wealthy”; “I AM free”; “I AM strong.” When these ‘FEELS’ are fixed within yourself, your formless being will take upon itself the forms of the things felt. You become ‘crucified’ upon the feelings of wealth, freedom, and strength. – Remain buried in the stillness of these convictions. Then, as a thief in the night and when you least expect it, theses qualities will be resurrected in your world as living realities.

The world shall touch you and see that you are flesh and blood for you shall begin to bear fruit of the nature of these qualities newly appropriated. This is the art of successful fishing for the manifestations of life.

Successful realization of the thing desired is also told us in the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Here, it is recorded that Daniel, while in the lion’s den, turned his back upon the lions and looked towards the light coming from above; that the lions remained powerless and Daniel’s faith in his God saved him.

This also is your story and you too must do as Daniel did. If you found yourself in a lion’s den you would have no other concern but lions. You would not be thinking of one thing in the world but your problem – which problem would be lions.

Yet, you are told that Daniel turned his back upon them and looked towards the light that was his God. If we would follow the example of Daniel we would, while imprisoned within the den of poverty of sickness, take our attention away from our problems of debts or sickness and dwell upon the thing we seek.

If we do not look back in consciousness to our problems but continue in faith – believing ourselves to be that which we seek, we too will find our prison walls open and the thing sought – yes, “whatsoever things” – realized.

Another story is told us; of the widow and the three drops of oil. The prophet asked the widow, “What have ye in your house?” And she replied, “Three drops of oil.” He then said to her, “Go borrow vessels. Close the door after ye have returned into your house and begin to pour.” And she poured from three drops of oil into all the borrowed vessels, filling them to capacity with oil remaining.

You, the reader, are this widow. You have not a husband to impregnate you or make you fruitful, for a ‘widow’ is a barren state. Your awareness is now the Lord – or the prophet that has become your husband.

Follow the example of the widow, who instead of recognizing an emptiness or nothingness, recognized the something – three drops of oil.

Then the command to her, “Go within and close the door,” that is, shut the door of the senses that tell you of the empty measures, the debts, the problems.

When you have taken your attention away completely by shutting out the evidence of the senses, begin to FEEL the joy, (symbolized by oil) – of having received the things desired. When the agreement is established within you so that all doubts and fears have passed away, then, you too will fill all the empty measures of your life and ill have an abundance running over.

Recognition is the power that conjures in the world. Every state that you have ever recognized, you have embodied. That which you are recognizing as true of yourself today is that which you are experiencing. So be as the widow and recognize joy, no matter how little the beginnings of recognition, and you will be generously rewarded – for the world is a magnified mirror, magnifying everything that you are conscious of being.

“I AM the Lord the God, which has brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; thou shalt have no other gods before me.” What a glorious revelation, your awareness now revealed as the Lord thy God! Come, awake from your dream of being imprisoned. Realize that the earth is yours, “and the fullness thereof; the world, and all that dwells therein.”

You have become so enmeshed in the belief that you are man that you have forgotten the glorious being that you are. Now with your memory restored DECREE the unseen to appear and it SHALL appear, for all things are compelled to respond to the Voice of God, Your awareness of being – the world is AT YOUR COMMAND!

AWAKE, O SLEEPER

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 01-08-1968

The Bible is addressed to the Imagination – which is spiritual sensation – and only immediately to the understanding, or reason.

In the fifth chapter of the Book of Ephesians we are told to: “Awake O sleeper and rise from the dead.” Now, reason could never comprehend these words, but the Bible is calling upon Imagination to awaken, telling Him that he is sleeping, dreaming his world into being. But Imagination, now a rational being, does not know this and therefore cannot believe it.

All of the commands of scripture are addressed to and fulfilled by the Lord, who is all Imagination! It is your own wonderful human Imagination who is called upon to “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!” (Psalms 44)

The greatest confession of faith man has ever received through revelation is called the Sh’ma. It is recorded in the 6th chapter of Deuteronomy as: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The Lord spoken of here is the Elohim, which is a compound unity of one, made up of others. I know, for I have stood in His presence. He embraced me and incorporated me into His body. Since that day back in 1929, I have been one with the body of the Risen Lord.

I believe we are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm, which is quoted in the tenth chapter of John as: “God has taken his place in the Divine Assembly. In the midst of the gods he holds judgment, saying: ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die as men and fall as one man, O princes.’” You will notice that this statement begins in the past, claiming men are gods, sons of the Most High. Then the future is prophesied as: “You will fall as one man.”

This fall was not a punishment, but a plan – a pretense by an assumed appearance in order to conceal the real intention, which is an expansion of further existence and ultimate birth! Having chosen us in Himself before the foundation of the world, one man fell, fragmenting itself into the unnumbered men that now appear. We are the gods in disguise who do not recognize our brothers, or ourselves.

In the beginning of Genesis it is said: “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept took one of his ribs. God made a woman from the rib and brought her to the man who said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, for she is taken out of Man.’ Therefore, man must leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, as they become one flesh.”

This statement is myth when viewed through the eyes of reason, but it is true. You will understand it perfectly when it is revealed in you.

Having had the vision, I say you have no body distinct from your soul. The body that scripture calls Eve is a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses. The physical body you wear, be it male or female, is emanated by Eve. She is the Jerusalem from above, who is the emanation of the Lord.

Although hidden from view, you are so one with Eve that if you were struck and felt pain, you would proclaim, “I am in pain,” and I am is God’s name. Imagination is joined to you and you are joined to me by our emanated Jerusalems. The Jerusalem from below bear’s sons into slavery, and the Jerusalem from above bears sons into freedom

When questioned by the Jews, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” Not understanding, they said, “It has taken us forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?”

That’s how the mind of man thinks. Thinking of an external thing made with human hands, they did not know that Jesus was speaking of the temple of the soul. Paul knew this, for he questioned the Corinthians, saying: “Do you not know that you are the temple of the Lord and the spirit of God dwells in you?”

Eve is your temple, your emanation, and your wife till the sleep of death is past. She is your soul, which God (Imagination) cleaves to and has become one with. There is no other Eve.

Falling in one body, you entered your cave and met your savior in the grave. Some found a female garment there and some a male, woven with care. I found a male garment. My wife found a female garment, but she is not female and I am not male, for in Christ there is no male or female, no bond or free, no Greek or Jew, no black or white. Being one with Christ, you – all imagination – are above the organization of eternal death.

In his great work called “Jerusalem,” Blake speaks of the sleep of Albion and his passage through eternal death – which is life as we know it. This world seems to be endless and without purpose, for when a rich man dies, he leaves his wealth behind. And when a poor man dies he is placed in a pauper’s grave. But given the same length of time, their bodies will turn into dust and bones, and no one will be able to distinguish one bone from the other.

Regardless of what man seems to achieve here, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of the Lord. And the strength of man here is the weakness of God. Yet this world has purpose, for man has to pass through it in order to enter into eternal life.

In Blake’s poem, “Jerusalem,” he tells of the sleep of power as it passes through eternal death, and of its awakening into eternal life, saying: “This theme calls me in sleep night after night and every morn awakens me at sunrise. Then I see the Savior over me, spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song.”

In his letter to Mr. Butts, Blake spoke of this poem, saying: “I can praise it because I dare not pretend to be anything other than the secretary whose authors are in heaven. It’s the grandest poem this world contains, for the spirit of truth dictated it morning after morning, sometimes twelve, sometimes twenty or fifty lines at a time. What now seems to be the labor of a long life was produced without labor or study and quite often against my will.”

This is how the poem begins: “Awake! Awake O sleeper in the land of shadows, wake! Expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine.”

The being in whom we were contained deliberately fell into this state called death, for the purpose of expansion into glorious life. His story is told in the parable of the grain of wheat, which unless it falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much. Here is the story of the mystery of life through death. Being all Imagination, if I want an extension of reality, I must contract and die. I must empty myself of the glory I had with the Lord, and enter the one body, which falls.

The world tells us the fall was a mistake but that is not so, for God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. One day you will awaken, your mask will come off, and you will be enhanced beyond your wildest dreams as you awaken to eternal life. And when we all awaken, we will know each other more intimately than is possible to know one another here. My wife and I often think the same thoughts; but no matter how intimate we may be, we cannot know the intimacy that will be ours when these garments are taken off and we are once more awakened into eternal life.

Everyone will awaken in time, but not by any effort on their part while here. Your awakening was predetermined and it will happen on time, regardless of whether you are shining shoes or employing a million people. Our government undoubtedly has a million people on its payroll, with the president as its head. So in a technical sense he employs a million; yet tonight the one who shines his shoes could awaken, while the president continues to sleep, yet no one can die. That is the glorious part!

Your body is your emanation. Cut off its head and – believing you are it – you will instantly renew the same body, but with no missing parts. You will step out of the garment you now wear and men will call you dead; but you will have just stepped into another garment with no bridgework, no fillings in your teeth, no gray hair, no need to wear glasses or a hearing aid, to discover you are a young man (or woman) about twenty years of age. You will be in a terrestrial world just as real as this one, and continue your journey until you awaken.

I have awakened and know that when this garment is taken off I will no longer be in this world of death. This world, however, does not terminate at the point where the senses cease to register it.

You cannot follow those who are called dead, because of your limitation. But your friend who emanated the body you knew here is not dead to himself. Rather, he now emanates the same body, only young, where he continues to dream his world into being, not even knowing that he has gone through the door called death.

It’s like leaving one room and entering another. Your friend is in the same fabulous, terrestrial world which the mysteries call eternal death, and from which he will one day awaken into eternal life. Having descended and entered the world of death, one day he will awaken to discover he has expanded and fulfilled his purpose. God made a limit to contraction and opacity, but not to translucency or expansion.

In the 1st chapter of Genesis it is said: “God made man in his own image. Male and female made he them.” The 2nd chapter changes this somewhat, but it is not a contradiction if you see it through imagination.

“The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his mouth the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”

Man’s destiny is to become a life-giving spirit, not just to remain an animated body. The purpose of your fall is to transform you into an entirely different world, one where you are a life-giving spirit, animating everything around you. There you will stop time at will and start it again. That is your destiny. Now, reason cannot understand this, and you can’t blame anyone who has not had the vision. Scholars believe the Bible is all myth, and certainly it is. If you take my body apart you will find no rib that is missing, yet scripture tells us one was removed.

The word rib is the Hebrew word “tselah,” (TSAY-la), which literally means, a portion of the soul that emanates, that leaves everything and cleaves to his emanation until they become one flesh.

You have cleaved to and become your emanation so completely you believe you are it. When you introduce yourself you always say, “I am” before you give your name. And if you are hurt you say, “I am in pain.” Always calling upon the name of God, you don’t say, “God is in pain,” but “I am,” and that is God’s name forever, because the gods came down.

Now let me repeat: I not only believe in God, I believe that all men are gods and that collective Man is God. I believe that when you hurt men, you hurt God. And when you hurt men you hurt yourself, because you are God and there is no other.

In spite of the horrors of the world, God is love! When you stand in His presence you can’t feel anything but love. And when love embraces you and you become one with God, you will know an ecstasy you have never known before. And with this union, you are incorporated into His body and know yourself to be all love!

“He who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.” (Romans 6) When you are incorporated into the body of love, you are united with the one body, the one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, knowing that you are He. Then you will awaken as the one who commanded the fall, for you will have fulfilled your purpose.

You will awaken in this world of death knowing you are God, the Father of God’s only begotten son, David. It is recorded that in the spirit David called Jesus “Adonai”, which is the Hebrew name for Father (Lord). (In Hebrew the name YAD HE VAU HE [pron. “YOD HEY VAV HEY” is so sacred the word “adoniyah” [corr. adonai, pron. “a-do-NAI”] is substituted.) In the spirit, David will call you father, and you will have fulfilled the 2nd Psalm. It is David who says: “I shall tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’”

One day when your time here is fulfilled, you will awaken and be born from above. Then David will appear and the entire drama of scripture will unfold within you, revealing your true identity. Then you will know you are one of the gods who agreed to dream in concert.

Now dreaming in concert, you and I see a building identically. You may see it through the eyes of one who would like to own it. I may see it through the eyes of one who admires it with no desire of possession, but we see the same building. We see the same streets and recognize the same number so we can go where we want to. But the world is a dream and we are the gods who agreed to dream in concert in order not to have any confusion. Had we agreed to dream individually and all play solo parts, this would be the wildest, maddest play possible!

I invite you now to go all out and imagine you really are the man or woman you want to be. But do not doubt, for the minute doubt steps in, a mental division descends, as doubt is the devil. If you will believe that regardless of what the world tells you, you are the man you want to be, you won’t go mad. Instead, you will become that man. Your dream world will rearrange itself to fit your new image into it without any difficulty or help on your part.

When someone born into poverty persists in dreaming he possesses great wealth and his dream comes true, his wealth seems perfectly natural to those who do not know his dream. You are dreaming. If you try to make your dream come true while doubting its possibility, you are heading toward a nervous breakdown. But if you go all out in your wonderful claim, you will fulfill it, for all things are possible to the God you are, for you are the God of whom the Bible speaks.

When the gods came down in the likeness of men, some found a female garment and some a male. Entering death’s door with those who enter, and lying down in the grave with visions of eternity, the gods are dreaming the dream of life until they awake and see Jesus and the linen clothes which were woven with the cooperation of a male and female. These were emanations of the soul which is neither male nor female.

“As it was appointed for all men to die once and after that comes the judgment, so Christ was offered once for the sins of many and will appear a second time, not concerning sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” (Hebrews 9)

You may hear of someone’s death, but he has not died to himself, as it was appointed that all men would die only once. We died when we left our heavenly home to come down and assume the limitations of the flesh. At that moment we were united with Christ in a death like his, with the promise that we would be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Your death is over. When you go through the gate called death, you don’t die, but instantly emanate a young, unaccountably new body. Most of those who go through the gate do not even know it. They simply take their young body for granted, just as they do everything here.

All day long a miracle goes on in your body. Unknown to your conscious reasoning mind, tonight’s dinner is being converted into blood, tissue, and bones. No man can make a drop of blood, grow a new heart, or make one hair on his head.

The other day it was recorded that a doctor had stated that his patient could not live three weeks without a heart transplant. He operated on the man, gave him a new heart, and the man lived 18 days! No matter what the doctors do, no man will live one hour beyond his span of time as told us in the Sermon on the Mount. “Who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life?” Yet man goes blindly on believing he can. All he is doing is publicizing his surgeons and the medical world. You are not the body you wear, so when its heart, liver, or lungs wear out, you will simply step out of it and emanate a new one.

Made in the image of God, you are God’s prodigal son who came out from the Father. You have cleaved to the body you wear so tightly, you have become one flesh with it, so that whenever it is hurt, you are hurt. That is the Adam and Eve of scripture, therefore, it is not a myth. Your emanation does come out of you, but not from a rib. You have no body distinct from your soul. Your called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlet of soul in this age. You are now a living soul, destined to become a life-giving spirit.

Having fallen, you emanate a body, which is necessary to function in this world, and you automatically do it with not one part missing. I meet those who have left this time/space and do not even know they have died.

If I told you right now that you are not only sound asleep but you are also dead, you would think me mad and the possessor of a demon. That’s what they said of the Risen Christ. “Why listen to him, he is mad and has a demon.” Taking up stones to stone him they said, “We stone you for blasphemy, for you being a man claim you are God.” Then he replied, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I say you are gods?’ If he calls you gods to whom the word of God came, then why do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world that he blasphemes?” (John 10)

Jesus never claimed he was greater than another. Those who heard him did not know they were God, and he was only trying to awaken them to the memory that they were the sons who came down. He said: “Go tell my brothers that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

He never claimed that his Father differed from theirs or that his God was different, but they could not understand the mystery. They tried to grasp it with the reasoning mind, yet everything takes place in the Imagination, which is God. “Man is all Imagination and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The Eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God Himself.” (William Blake)

Now let us go into the silence

AWAKENED IMAGINATION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 1954

As you have heard, this morning’s subject is “Awakened Imagination”. It is my theme for the entire series of nineteen lectures. Everything is geared towards the awakening of the imagination. I doubt if there is any subject on which clear thinking is more rare than the imagination. The word itself is made to serve all kinds of ideas. many of them directly opposed to one another. But here this morning I hope to convince you that this is the redeeming power in man. This is the power spoken of in the Bible as the Second Man. “the Lord from Heaven”.

This is the same power personified for us as a man called Christ Jesus.

In the ancient text it was called Jacob, and there are numberless names in the Bible all leading up and culminating in the grand flower called Christ Jesus.

It may startle you to identify the central figure of the Gospels as human imagination, but I am quite sure before the series is over, you will be convinced that this what the ancients intended that we should know, but man has misread the Gospels as history and biography and cosmology, and so completely has gone asleep as to the power within himself.

Now this morning I have brought you the means by which this mighty power in us may be awakened. I call it the art of revision. I take my day and I review it in my mind’s eye. I start with the first incident in the morning. I go through the day; when I come to any scene in my unfolding day that displeased me, or if it didn’t displease me if it was not as perfect as I thought it could have been, I stop right there and I revise it. I re-write it, and after I have re-written it so that it conforms to the ideal I wished I had experienced, then I experience that in my imagination as though I had experienced it in the flesh. I do it over and over until it takes on the tone of reality, and experience convinces me that that moment that I have revised and relived will not recede into my past. It will advance into my future to confront me as I have revised it. If I do not revise it, these moments, because they never recede and they always advance, will advance to confront me perpetuating that strange, unlovely incident. But if I refuse to allow the sun to descend upon my wrath, so that at the end of a day I never accept as final the facts of the day, no matter how factual they are, I never accept them, and revising it I repeal the day and bring about corresponding changes in my outer world.

Now, not only will this art of revision accomplish my every objective, but as I begin to revise the day it fulfills its great purpose and its great purpose is to awaken in me the being that men call Christ Jesus, that I call my wonderful human imagination, and when it awakens it is the eye of God and it turns inward into the world of thought and there I see that what formerly I believed to exist on the outside really exists within myself. No matter what it is, I then discover that the whole of Creation is rooted in me and ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. And from that moment on I find my real purpose in life and my real purpose is simply to do the will of Him that sent me, and the will of Him that sent me is this –that of all that he has given me I shall lose nothing but raise it up again.

And what did he give me? He gave me every experience in my life. He gave me you. Every man, woman and child that I meet is a gift to me from my Father, but they fell in me because of my attitude towards society, because of my attitude towards myself. When I begin to awaken and the eye opens and I see the whole is myself made visible, I then must fulfill my real purpose, which is the will of Him that sent me, and the Will is to raise up those that I allowed in my ignorance when I slept to descend within me.

Then starts the real art of revision; to be the man, regardless of your impressions of that man, regardless of the facts of the case that are all staring you in the face, it is your duty when you become awakened to lift him up within yourself and you will discover that he was never the cause of your displeasure. When you look at him and you are displeased, look within and you will find the source of the displeasure. It did not originate there.

Now let me give you a case history to illustrate this point. I know a few of you were at the banquet and maybe a few of you heard me last Thursday on T. V. but I doubt in this audience of say twenty-three or twenty-four hundred of us, that more than say a hundred and fifty heard it, and even if you heard it you can hear it time and time again for it is this, that if you hear it will cause you to act upon it because as I told you, and I think I did last Sunday, but if I didn’t let me tell you now; if you attended the entire nineteen and you became saturated with all that I have to tell you, so that you had all the knowledge you think it takes to achieve your objectives, and you did not apply what you received, it would avail you nothing; but a little knowledge which you carry out in action, you will find to be far more profitable than much knowledge which you neglect to carry out in action. So by repeating this case history this morning, though say a hundred or two hundred of you have heard it, it will help you to remember you must do something about it.

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

Two years before, after a violent quarrel, she was ordered out of her son’s home by her daughter-in-law. Her son said “Mother, you need no proof from me that I love you: it’s obvious: I think I have proven that every day of my life, but if that is Mary’s decision, and I regret it, it must be my decision, for I love Mary and we live in the same house and it is our house: it is our little family, and I am sorry she feels this way about it, but you know these little things that culminate in an explosion as took place today. If that is her decision, it is mine”. That was two years ago. She went home and she realized that night after night for over two years she had allowed the sun to descend upon her wrath. She thought of this wonderful family that she loved and felt herself ostracized from it, expelled from the home of her son. She did nothing about revising it and yet I had been talking revision to my New York audience for the past year.

This is what she did now. She knew the morning’s mail brought nothing. This was a Wednesday night. There had been no correspondence in two years. She had sent her grandson at least a dozen gifts in the two years. Not one was ever acknowledged. She knew they had been received for she had insured many of them; so she sat down that night and mentally wrote herself two letters–one from her daughter-in-law, expressing a great kindness for her, saying that she had been missed in the home and asking her when she was coming to see them; then she wrote one from her grandson in which he said “Grandmother, I love you”. Then came a little expression of thanks for the last birthday present, which was in April, and then came a feeling of sadness rather because he hadn’t seen her and begging her to come and see him soon.

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

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

She gave me permission to tell that story. When I told it, and we came to the period of questions and answers, there was a strange reaction from that crowd. They wondered what joy life would hold for any of us if we had to write our own letters; if we had to do everything to ourselves that seemingly is done in joy; that seemingly is spontaneous coming from another; but I don’t want to write myself a love letter from my wife, or my sweetheart or my friend. I want that one to feel this way towards me and to express it unknown to me that I may receive a surprise in life.

Well, I am not denying that sleeping man firmly believes that is the way things happen. When a man awakes he realizes that everything he encounters is apart of himself, and what he does not now comprehend, he knows, because the eye is opened, that it is related by affinity to some as yet unrealized force in his own being; that he wrote it but he has forgotten it, that he slapped himself in the face but he has forgotten it; that within himself he started the entire unfolding drama, and he looks out upon a world, and it seems strange to him, because most of us in our sleep are totally unaware of what we are doing from within ourselves.

What that lady did, every man and woman in this audience today can do. It will not take you years to prove it; what I tell you now may startle you; it may seem to be bordering on insanity for the insane believe in the reality of subjective states and the sane man only believes in what the senses will allow, what they will dictate, and I’m going to tell you when you begin to awake, you assert the supremacy of imagination and you put all things in subjection to it. You never again bow before the dictates of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without.

To you Truth is not confined by facts but by the intensity of your imagination. So here we find the embodiment of Truth, which I say is human imagination, standing in the world drama before the embodiment of reason personified as Pontius Pilate. And he is given the authority to question truth and they ask him, “What is the truth?” and Truth remains silent. He refuses to justify any action of his; he refuses to justify anything that was done to him, for he knows no man cometh unto me save I call him: no man takes away my life, I lay it down myself.

You didn’t choose me, I have chosen you. For here is Truth seeing nothing hereafter in pure objectivity, but seeing everything subjectively related to himself and he the source of all the actions that take place within his world; so Truth remains absolutely silent and says nothing when reason questions him concerning the true definition of Truth. Because when the eye opens it knows that what is an idea to sleeping man is a fact to the awakened imagination, an objective fact, not an idea. I entertain the idea of a friend and I make some wonderful concept of him in my mind’s eye and when I sleep it seems to be a wish, it seems to be the longing of my heart, but purely subjective, just an idea. And the eye within me opens, and he stands before me embodying the quality that I desired in my sleep to see him express. So what is an idea to sleeping man, the unawakened imagination, is an objective reality to awakened imagination.

Now, this exercise calls for, I would say, the active, voluntary use of imagination as against the passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. We never accept as true and as final anything unless it conforms to the ideal we desire to embody within our world, and we do exactly what the grandmother did. But now we start it and we do it daily. You may get your results tomorrow; it may come the day after; it may come in a week, but I assure you they will come.

You do not need some strange laboratory, like our scientists, to prove or disprove this theory. Here in 1905 a young man startled the scientific world with his equation that no one could even test. It is said not six men lived who could understand his equation. It was 14 years later before Lord Rutherford could devise the means to test that equation and he found that it was true, not 100%, because he did not have the means at his hand to really give it a complete test. It was another 14 years before further tests could be made. And you know the results of that equation that Einstein gave us in 1905. For today man, not knowing the power of his own imagination, stands startled at the results of that unlocking of energy. But he was the man who said, and I put it in the first page of my new book–“Imagination is more important than knowledge”

That was Albert Einstein. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For if man accepts as final the facts that evidence bears witness to, he will never exercise this God-given means of redemption, which is his imagination.

Now I’m going to ask you to test this: you will not take the three weeks that I am here to prove it or disprove it, but the knowledge of it cannot prove itself, only the application of that knowledge can prove it or disprove it. I know from experience you cannot disprove it. Take an objective, take a job, take some conversation with your boss, take an increase in salary. You say well, the job doesn’t allow it, or maybe the Union will not allow it. I don’t care what doesn’t allow it.

Yesterday morning’s mail brought me one, where, in San Francisco, this captain, a pilot, and he writes me that I saw him backstage after one of my meetings, and there he said, “But Neville, you are up against a stone wall. I am a trained pilot; I have gone all over the world, all over the seven seas; I’m a good pilot and I love the sea, not a thing in this world I want to do but go to sea; yet they restrict me to certain waters because of seniority. No matter what argument I give them the Union is adamant and they have closed the book on my request.” I said, “I don’t care what they have done, you are transferring the power that rightfully belongs to God, which is your own imagination, to the shadow you cast upon the screen of space.

“So here, we are in this room; need it remain a room? Can’t you use your imagination to call this abridge. This is now a bridge and I am a guest on the bridge of your ship, and you are not in waters restricted by the Union; you are in waters that you desire to sail your ship. Now close your eyes and feel the rhythm of the ocean and feel with me and commune with me and tell me of your joy in first proving this principle. and secondly in being at sea where you want to be. He is now in Vancouver on a ship bringing a load of lumber down to Panama. He has a complete list that will take him through the year what this man has to do. He is going into waters legitimately that the Union said he could not go. This doesn’t dispense with unions, but it does not put anyone in our place- -no one, kings, queens, presidents, generals, we take no one and enthrone him and put him beyond the power that rightfully belongs to God. So I will not violate the law but things will open that I will never devise.

I will sit in the silence and within myself I will revise the picture. I will hear the very man who told me “No, and that’s final” and hear him tell me yes, and a door opens. I don’t have to go and pull strings or pull any wires whatsoever. I call upon this wonderful power within myself, which man has forgotten completely because he personified it and called it another man, even though it is a glorious picture of a man but that is not the man: the real man is not in some other world. When religion speaks, if it’s a real religion, it speaks not of another world; it speaks of another man that is latent but unborn in every man that has attunement with another world of meaning, so that man sat and he tuned in with another world of meaning and brought into being a power that he allowed to go to sleep because he read the laws of man too well. He accepted as final the dictate of facts for they read him the by-laws, they read him the laws of the Union. And here today he is flying the ocean as he wants to do it. The grandmother is no longer locked out from the home she loved, but she is in communion, but she was locked out by herself for two years. And he was locked out by himself for well over 18 months, and burning up day after day allowing the sun to descend upon his wrath when he had the power within himself and the key to unlock every door in the world.

I say to each and everyone of you I wouldn’t take from you your outer comfort, your religion, for all these things are like toys for sleeping man, but I come to awaken within you that which when it awakes it sees an entirely different world. It sees a world that no man when he sleeps could ever see, and then he starts to raise within himself every being that God gave him; and may I tell you God gave you every man that walks the face of the earth. He also gave it for this purpose that nothing is to be discarded. Everyone in the world must be redeemed and your individual life is the process by which this redemption is brought to pass.

So we don’t discard because the thing is unpleasant, we revise it; revising it we repeal it, and as we repeal it it projects itself on the screen of space bearing witness to the power within us, which is our wonderful human imagination. And I say human advisedly–some would have me say the word divine. The very word itself means nothing to man. He has pushed it off from himself completely and divorced himself from the thing that he now bows before and calls by other names. I say human imagination. As Blake said “Rivers, mountains, cities, villages all are human”. When the eye opens you see them in your own bosom, in your own wonderful bosom they all exist, they are rooted there. Don’t let them fall and remain fallen; lift them up for the will of my Father is this, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing but raise it up again, and I raise it up every time I revise my concept of another and make him conform to the ideal image I myself would like to express in this world. When I do unto him what I would love the world to do unto me, and see in me I am lifting him up.

And may I tell you what happens to that man when he does it? First of all, he is already turned around within himself. He no longer sees the world in pure objectivity, but the whole world subjectively related to himself, and hang it upon himself. As he lifts it up do you know he blooms within himself. When this eye of mine was first opened I beheld man as the prophet saw him. I saw him as a tree walking: some were only like little antlers of a stag, others were majestic in their foliage, and all that were really awake were in full bloom. These are the trees in the garden of God. As told us in the old ancient way of revision in the 61st chapter of the Book of Isaiah—“Go and give beauty for ashes, go and give joy for mourning, give the spirit of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may become trees of righteousness, plantings to the glory of God.”

That is what every man must do, that’s revision. I see ash when the business is gone; you can’t redeem it, you can’t lift it up, conditions are bad and the thing has turned to ash. Put beauty in its place; see customers, healthy customers, healthy in finances, healthy in the attitude towards you, healthy in every sense of the word. See them loving to shop with you if you are a shopkeeper; if you are a factory worker, don’t see anything laying you off, lift it up, put beauty in the place of ash, for that would be ash if you were laid off with a family to feed. If someone is mourning, put joy in the place of mourning; if someone is heavy of spirit, put the spirit of praise in place of the spirit of heaviness, and as you do this and revise the day you turn around, and turning around you turn up, and all the energies that went down when you were sound asleep and really blind now turn up and you become a tree of righteousness, a planting to the glory of God. For I have seen them walking this wonderful earth, which is really the Garden; we have shut ourselves out by our concept of self and we have turned down.

As told us in the Book of Daniel, we were once this glorious tree and it was felled to the very base, and what formerly sheltered the nations and fed the nations and comforted the bird and gave some comfort to the animals from the sun of the day, of the heat of the day; and suddenly some voice said from within, “Let it lie, let it remain as it is, but do not disturb the roots; I will water it with the dew of heaven and as I water it with the dew of heaven it will once more grow again, but this time it will consciously grow, it will know what it really is and who it is. In its past it was majestic but it had no conscious knowledge of its majesty, and I felled it- -that was the descent of man. And now, he will once more spring from within himself and he will be a tree walking, a glorious, wonderful tree.

Now to those who are sound asleep this may seem to you too startling: this may be just as startling as Einstein’s equation was; that was startling too. But I tell you I’ve seen it and I see it–men are destined to be trees in the garden of God. They are planted on earth for a purpose and they don’t always remain men, they are transformed as they turn in and turn up. This is the true meaning of the transfiguration. There is a complete metamorphosis taking place like the grub into the butterfly. You don’t remain what you appear to be when man is asleep, and there is no more glorious picture in the world than to see this living animated human being, for every branch within him is represented by an extension of himself called another, and when he lifts the other up that branch not only comes into leafage but it blossoms and the living human blossoms that blossom upon the tree of man who awakens.

So that’s my message for you this year; I’ll give it to you to stir into being that which sleeps in you, for the son of God sleeps in man and the only purpose of being is to awaken him. So it is not to awaken this, nice as it appears to be, but this man of sense-is only a casing: it is called the first man, but the first shall be last and the last shall be first. So that which comes into being second, like Jacob coming second from his mother’s womb, he takes precedence over his brother Esau who came first. Esau was the one like this, he was made of skin and hair, and Jacob was made a smooth skinned lad, but that one that comes second suddenly becomes the lord of all the nations and that one sleeps in every man born of woman, and it is the duty of a teacher or a true religion to awaken that man, not to talk of another world, not to make promises to be fulfilled beyond the grave, but to tell him as he awakens now he is in heaven and the kingdom is come now, this day, on earth. For as he awakens he revises his day and he repeals his day and projects a more beautiful picture onto the screen of space.

BE IMITATORS OF GOD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-21-68

“It has been taught us from the primal state, that that which is, was wished until it were.” (William Shakespeare)

God started with a wish, saying; “Let us make man in our image.” And we are told that we will be perfect as our Father is perfect, and holy as our Father is holy. Therefore, whatever God was, when his work is completed, man must be. We are told to be imitators of God as dear children, so we must discover how he became us in order to imitate him.

It seems God lives as one possessed by a dream. Jeremiah tells us: “The will of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” God, refusing to turn back, remains lost in his dream until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind.

If you want your dream realized, imitate God by becoming totally possessed by your dream. Do this and you, too, will reach your desire’s fulfillment, just as God has brought – and is bringing – his dream to completion. Have an intense wish. Clothe it in tones of reality and imitate God by living as one possessed by a dream. Like God, do not turn aside until you have executed and accomplished the intents of your mind.

God began the good work in you and when he brings it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ, you will reflect the glory of God and bear the express image of his person. If God will not stop until that wish is completely realized, then you must be equally persistent. Regardless of things to the contrary, persist until your dream is completely realized.

See the story of Jesus Christ as God’s plan of redemption. Read the directions, and you will discover that it is only as the Risen Christ that Jesus makes himself manifest. When Judas asked: “How will you manifest yourself to us and not to the others?” he answered: “Any man who loves me will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my word for the word I speak is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

Scripture is the Father’s word. First recorded as individual expressions of the Risen Lord, each vision is complete within itself. With nothing in the paragraphs to indicate their chronological order, the writers wrote a story – which appears to be history, but it is not.

I will take one such paragraph, as it fits a letter I recently received. In it she said: “I fell asleep requesting a deeper understanding when you appeared as the Risen Christ and handed me the number 26. I have tried to understand this and can only come up with the number eight.”

If you add the two and the six together you have the number of the Risen Lord. It was on the eighth day (the first day of the new week) that Christ rose; therefore, eight is always associated with resurrection, regeneration, and the number of the Lord. But I gave her the number 26!

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, of which five are repeated and called finals. We have kaph as 20, but when used as a final it becomes 500. Mem is 40, whose numerical value becomes 600 when used as a final. Nun is 50, and when encountered as a final it is 700. When peh is first encountered it is 80, but as a final it becomes 800, as its tone does not change. The symbolical value of this letter is the mouth; in its final form it is the mouth of God: “My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me void but must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

You are Christ, the Word sent forth from God’s mouth as his hope of glory. God is making you into his perfect image to possess all that he possesses, as God’s Word cannot return void. This is the mouth I have given this lady. Recently she has been wondering why – when she knows something intuitively – she is hesitant to speak out. Questioning herself, she fell asleep and saw me as the Risen Lord, at which time I gave her a voice of authority to speak out, regardless of what others may say.

Only the Risen Lord will be seen. I can tell you: I have ascended from earth and entered the highest heaven, but you will not know it until my Father reveals it to you. When asked: “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” they said: “Some say John the Baptist come again, others say Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets of old.” But when he asked: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Risen Lord then replied: “Flesh and blood could not have told you this, but my Father who is in heaven, he has revealed it to you.”

Many will tell me they love what I teach, but walk away, not believing it to the point of application. But those who truly love me believe and apply my words. They are the ones who will see me as the Risen Lord. They will recognize a man called Neville – not as a man of flesh and blood, but as a completed pattern; for the pattern which God placed within me, has erupted. If you love the idea of completing such a pattern, then you are in love with me. Not as flesh and blood, but the Christ who has risen within me. When I manifested myself to this lady she knew I was Neville; yet she also knew I was the Risen Christ; thereby, having the same experience as Peter. Having heard and loving the message, Peter recognized the Risen Lord – while others heard it, but – not loving the telling – they did not have the experience. Such is granted through the discernment of love.

Many claim to love Christ, but worship an icon on the wall. Called the image of God, Christ is God’s plan, which was in the beginning with God, when he said: “Let us make man in our image.” Christ reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person. That image is found in the pattern. I have described this image in a more chronological manner than recorded in the Bible.

I know those who have fallen in love with the story which awoke within me. One who departed last July saw me as the Lord. Another lady here saw me as the Risen Lord. They did not see me as a man of flesh and blood, but as spirit, God’s power and wisdom raised out of the physical world and into the kingdom of God. Just as God has deluded himself and lives as one possessed by a dream to bring it to fulfillment, you can imitate him while you wait for his work to be completed in you. And if you are equally persistent in your dream, no power can stop it from coming to fulfillment. But you cannot deviate. You cannot turn from the dream to see what others are doing, or what they think about it; you must be willing to lose yourself, to be possessed by your dream. No man of flesh and blood is Christ. “If any one says: ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is’ believe him not.” (Mark 13) When Christ comes, it is from within and its knowledge is without uncertainty. No one can ever deny the truth of what this lady saw. The man who stands before you now is full of weaknesses and limitations of the flesh. Tomorrow this lady could hear of some unpleasant happening in my life, but it would not disturb what she saw and heard when – in vision – she saw me as the Risen Lord and I gave her the voice of authority. From now on she will have the courage to speak out when she intuitively knows she is right.

Now, when you experience Christ and tell your friends, 99.99% of them will turn their back upon you, because they will see you as a mortal with human weaknesses, and you will not impress them. But don’t share your experiences to impress anyone, rather to show the truth of God’s word. Do that, and there will be a remnant who will believe; then you will appear to them as the Risen Christ.

Read scripture carefully and you will discover that no one saw him as the Risen Christ until after the ascension, which occurs while wearing the body of man. I know, for on the eighth day of April, 1960, I ascended; and from that day on everything in me has turned around, although I am anchored here during the day. I have been seen as the Risen Lord in New York, San Francisco, and all over, by ones who are in love with the word which they have heard from me. They love the hope I have held out to them, that in a body of flesh and blood with all of its weaknesses, there is a plan of salvation that will awaken and unfold in all. That plan is the Christ they love.

No man born from the womb of woman is Christ. If there is another Christ other than he who was crucified and buried within you, he is false, and false teachers teach him as another. Christ is God’s plan of redemption. “He has made known unto me the mystery of his will which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” Christ is the word who is one with the individual who speaks it.

Imitate God as a dear child, by having a controlled dream. Make a composite picture of what you want. Ask no one to aid you or if it is right for you. Desiring life to be full, do what God does. Make a wish and possess it. Turn neither to the left nor the right, but persist, just as God is doing, and nothing can keep you from expressing it.

Then, when you have finished the work you came to do, you will understand that the furnaces you have gone through were necessary to bring you out as an image who reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person, for you will be endowed with life in yourself. Having become one with God, you will have inherited all that God is!

In my book, Resurrection, I have shared my visions in their chronological order. I know of no other book, including the Bible, which has given it that way. The Bible in its manuscript form is a series of paragraphs. These paragraphs were used to tell a story, because those who were eyewitnesses were leaving this world of Caesar, and if the events were not recorded, there would only be an oral tradition and confusion would reign. Luke starts his book saying:”Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things that have been accomplished among us, by those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.”

The word Theophilus means one who loves God. Luke is writing his orderly account for the individual who, loving the word, enters the state of Theophilus and sees the Risen Lord.

Now, Luke did not claim to make an exact presentation of the source material, but to present it better than those who preceded him in the telling. He tells us that many had undertaken to compile a narrative, yet we only have four records. John tells us that we must be born from above, but he does not bring any of the symbolism into it. But because of Luke’s account, the world has taken the story as fact. Believing that Jesus was born from the womb of a woman, they believe he came in the same normal manner as all children do – with one exception, his mother did not have a husband.

Luke tells the story in its normal state, using shepherds rather than kings (as recorded in Matthew). Today’s scholars are convinced that the three kings Matthew speaks of were definitely inserted. The witnesses are three normal people, not kings; and the child is only a sign of your birth from above, which can happen when you are fifty or eighty, and has nothing to do with your so-called appearance in this world. While walking the earth as a normal, natural, individual it happens; and when it does you simply record the event next to the parallel passage in scripture. I ask you now to fall in love with my message of salvation. Christ rose in me. God’s son appeared to reveal me as God the Father. All is Self, as there is no other. I AM the being called Jesus Christ. I AM the plan, the Word which cannot return void, for I have accomplished that for which I was sent.

Believe me! Fall in love with my message, and Christ will unfold in you; and you, too, will tell it; and those who fall in love with what you say – in the hope that it will unfold in them – will have the joy of seeing you as the Risen Lord, for in the end there is Jesus only.

Because of the nature of the grace that He bestowed, we have different gifts. There are those who have the gift of the apostle; others the gift of prophesy; some are teachers, healers, or miracle workers. All will differ in the kingdom, but the gift itself is unmerited. It is not your due and cannot be earned. The measure of your gift determines the nature of the part you play in the body of the Risen Lord. All parts are important and good, and the least there is greater than the greatest here.

Those who see clearly – as many of you do – are prophets and are so very high in the kingdom. You are the voice of God Himself! Hearing what is being said from within, you are dictated to by the Spirit of Christ – who is yourself. How much closer to God can you get than to be his voice, than to be his mouth? That’s what the prophet is. But he is not granted the right to interpret what he hears and sees. That belongs to another aspect of being.

Start now to imitate God by having a glorious dream of the man or woman you would like to be. Don’t ask anyone if it is possible, for all things are possible to God. Don’t ask anyone if you should want it, simply claim it. Because there is no death in the true sense of the word; if your desire is not fulfilled here, it will be completed, so start your dream and imitate God. You could be ninety and still have things you want to experience, goals you want to realize, so claim them now!

Personally, I hope you will set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; but if you have no memory of affluence, and want to taste it here, become possessed with the idea and refuse to become diverted. Whatever your hunger may be, make it a part of your dream.

And dream nobly! Imitate God as a dear child! He started with a wish, saying: “Let us make man in our image,” and God has persisted in his wish as though it were true. Do as God has done. Take a wish and persist in believing it is true. Do not deviate; just continue believing in its truth, and in the end you will unveil your wish. You will project it on the screen of space, just as God has unveiled his wish as Jesus Christ.

As a man in whom Jesus Christ unveiled himself, I always thought myself to be the body of flesh, not knowing I was that glorified being who reflected the glory of God and bore the very stamp of His nature. I did not know I was perfect as my Father, yet I had not earned it. That I was as holy as my father, but had not earned it. It was all a gift, because it was my Father’s wish that I might possess it, and I did.

Now let us go into the silence.

BEAR YE ONE ANOTHER’S BURDENS

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 03-17-1969

The Bible is the most practical book in the world. In it we are told that one named Simon carried the cross behind Jesus. The word “Simon” means “to hear with understanding and consent to what is heard.” And Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination.

The gospel tells what happens in the soul of Jesus. The events recorded there are seen and heard by none save but Him. Through these experiences He gains the certainty that He is not only the Son of God, but also God Himself. But when he tells his story few will accept it, as his experience of scripture differs greatly from its interpretation by the priests and rabbis. Simon, however, understands what he hears and, consenting to it, he carries the cross.

We are told to “Bear ye one another’s burden and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Now, the law of Christ is described in the Sermon on the Mount. It is a psychological law, as Christ tells you in the 5th chapter of Matthew, saying: “You heard it said of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you, anyone who looks lustfully upon a woman has already committed the act with her in his heart.’” (The word “heart” and “soul” are synonymous in scripture.)

When you are told in the 4th chapter of Psalms to “Commune with your own heart upon your bed,” are you not communing with yourself? And in that communion are you not told that the act is committed? I tell you: the law of Christ is imaginal and you carry His burden, for “Inasmuch as we do it to one of the least of these, we do it unto Him.”

Paul, seeing the meaning of Christ, said: “From now on 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.” Paul realized that Christ was the pattern of salvation buried in every child born of woman, and did not seek a little Christ, but the universal Cosmic Christ buried in all.

There is only one Christ, so when you imagine, you are imagining Christ. Now, one who hears and believes this is called Simon. It is he who goes out and carries the cross by lifting the burden from the back of the one being who is carrying the entire cross; for every human is a cross, who collectively form the cross the Cosmic Christ bears.

When one hears the story and believes it, he goes out to lift the weight of every cross. Seeing someone struggle to pay rent or buy food because he is financially embarrassed, Simon lifts his cross by seeing the man gainfully employed. He does this because he knows he is doing it only to himself, as there cannot be another. As a psychological act, he represents the other to himself as he would like to see that other, and to the degree he is self-persuaded that what he imagined is true, it will become true.

Simon does not move a cross from one little point in space to another. He goes through life following Christ, as he bears the cross and lifts the weight of mankind. Many a man remains behind the 8-ball because no one ever thought he could be anything other than what he appears to be. Fortunately I had a mother who, at a tender age took me aside and persuaded me that I was her favorite. She would say: “You will make mother very proud of you, won’t you?” and naturally I said: “Yes, mother.” I wore long white curls at the time, and she would curl my hair, run her finger up my curl, kiss me, and send me on my way – then call the next one to have his hair curled. Mother told the same story to each of us. It was only after we had all grown to manhood that we discovered what mother had done, but by that time she had accomplished her purpose. She didn’t expect us to make a fortune but to be one in whom she would be proud, and in our own separate spheres we all became successful in her eyes.

Many a man is a failure today because no one ever believed he could be otherwise. So I say to you: if you believe that there is only one being and only one cross, you will lift the cross from a seeming other, and – as Simon – follow your imagination to its fulfillment.

Every child born of woman is a cross, animated by Christ Jesus; so when you lift the burden from an infant or one of many years, you are doing it unto yourself. As you bear one another’s burdens you fulfill the law of Christ; for inasmuch as you do it to one of the least of these, you have done it unto me. If you believe me and put your belief into practice, you are bearing the cross. But if you are so engrossed in your own little world that you cannot see another as a projection of yourself, you do not believe me and will not become a Simon. Only as you believe and act, will you bear the cross as Simon, enter the temple in the Spirit, and – finding the child – take him up in your arms and say: “Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace according to thy Word, for my eyes have seen the salvation of God.”

Called a little child in the Book of Luke, God’s creative power is symbolized as the unveiled arm in the Book of Isaiah. In this wonderful 53rd chapter of Isaiah, the prophet speaks of the unveiling of the arm of God as the salvation of the world. And when the prophecy is fulfilled it appears as though you are betrayed, but I ask you: what did Judas betray? He betrayed the messianic secret of Jesus and the place where he might be found.

A secret must first be heard before it can be told. I have betrayed the messianic secret in my book called Resurrection, so I have played the part of Judas. Having experienced the part of Jesus, I have recorded my experiences so that anyone coming after I have gone from this sphere will know the secret.

The messianic secret is unlike that which the priesthoods of the world believe. Jesus is not a little man who comes from without to save mankind. Jesus comes from within, for He is a pattern, which unfolds in and reveals the individual as the Son of God who is God. Knowing my scripture, when the visions came upon me I searched and found they dovetailed one another. I have shared my experiences with everyone who will listen; and those who hear them with understanding and accept them become Simon, who picks up the cross and eases the burden from the back of the Cosmic Christ.

When you meet someone who is unemployed and take a moment to imagine him gainfully employed, you are Simon. Practice this art daily. Pick up your cross and set everyone free from what he seems to be. That is how you bear one another’s burden and so fulfill the law of Christ, which is all imaginal.

If you hear this message with understanding you will go out and fulfill the law of Christ. If you do not understand me you may not agree, but I tell you: this is the most incredible story that can ever be told. You need not have a brilliant mind to accept it. In fact, the more brilliant your mind is, the less chance this concept will be believed, yet I tell you it is true. Everyone who accepts it will one day experience scripture within himself, for the gospel is nothing more than that which happened within the soul of Jesus, who is Jehovah, who is the Lord, in you.

Jesus is your awareness of being, your I AM. It is He who hears the story and either accepts or rejects it. If you think of a man who lived two thousand years ago when I use the word “Jesus,” you will not see the Jesus in everyone; for Jesus is awareness, sound asleep and carrying a tremendous burden as His dream. If you will accept my story, Jesus will begin to awaken as you lift his burden and carry the cross behind your imagination. Simon is first seized, and then the cross is placed upon him as the individual who hears and understands and consents to what he has heard.

If you really believe me you will not pass anyone without doing something to lift his burden. Taking up his cross, you will represent him to yourself as you would like to see him; and to the degree that you are self-persuaded, he will become it, even though he may never know what you did. Things will happen in his world and he will become what you conceived him to be, not knowing who did it…but who did it? Christ, for there is only Christ in the world. You can take no credit in the doing, because you are only doing it to yourself.

As you represent another to yourself as you would like to see him, you are lifting his burden and fulfilling God’s law. And when your time is fulfilled you will enter the temple and find the sign of the birth of your creative power as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then the arm of God, who creates everything, is unveiled in you and from that day on whatever you imagine will come to pass – I don’t care what it is. I ask you to dwell upon this thought and follow the pattern of Simon. Lift the burden of someone today, and maybe tomorrow you will be able to do it to two. Don’t let another remain carrying his burden, because there is no other. Lift his burden from yourself and follow Jesus Christ, your own wonderful human imagination.

The dream of life begins with the call of Abraham, and comes to its climax and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Everyone must and will experience that climax. Then the curtain will come down and you will leave this sphere to join the heavenly brotherhood, who contemplates this world of death saying: “What seems to be, is – to those to whom it seems to be.” Take that one little statement: what seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be. You can assume any state and persuade yourself that it is so, and it will become so. Torments, despair, and eternal death will also seem to be, “But Divine mercy steps beyond and redeems Man in the body of Jesus”; for in the end there is only one body, only one Lord, and you are that one Jesus Christ. You will wear that one Risen Body as your own and be the one Spirit that inhabits it. And you will know yourself to be that one Spirit who is the Lord of all.

Today you are not aware of your true identity, but Paul made it very, very clear in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, when he said: “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we certainly shall be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Do you see the difference in tense? We have already died with Christ, and we will live with him when God’s pattern of salvation erupts and the gospel unfolds within us individually.

Now, whenever I tell my story there are always those who – knowing me by my physical origin – do not know me by reason of my spiritual birth. Seeing only the outside man called Neville, they judge from appearances and claim I am blaspheming by making these bold claims. But a few will believe me and become Simon by lifting the burden and transforming the lives of those he meets, no matter that it may seem to be.

If you want more money, better health, or the state of marriage, Simon simply hears your desire as granted, then goes his way believing that what he has heard is now a physical fact which will confront you in the near future. He never seeks your thanks, but knows your desire must come into being; for he has lifted your burden upon his shoulder and believes in his own wonderful human imagination.

When you hear and believe in God’s pattern of salvation, you are believing in Jesus. Everyone contains that pattern – therefore everyone is Jesus. Leave no one distressed. Do not give from your pocket, but give them every desire of their heart from your imagination. You could give money from now until the ends of time, and not give of yourself! Only when you imagine for another are you truly giving of yourself; and as you believe in the reality of what you have imagined, are you lifting the burden you are called upon to do, thereby fulfilling the law of God.

When you feel the joy of having done it, don’t wait for the phone to ring; simply go your way and lift the burden from another, and then another. An artist friend recently told me about some work he had done for a friend, but had not been paid according to their verbal agreement. After our discussion I heard my friend tell me the debt was paid. That was all I did. Last night he told me that, seemingly out of the blue, the man came to his house and gave him a check for the full amount agreed upon. Now I will say to him that check will be multiplied over and over again, for there are many artists needing your talent to improve theirs.

Don’t say something cannot be done, for the minute you do, you are placing a limit upon yourself. And don’t limit your friend because of his financial, social, or intellectual background. That’s a heavy cross for him to bear. Rather, lift his cross and set him free. We live in a world of horrors, but as Blake said: “Don’t be intimidated by the horrors of the world. All is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Follow this pattern and you will receive from your own ego a deeper insight into the eternal beauties of reality. You will also receive an even deeper release from all that now seems so sad and terrible.”

When you know this truth, you will lift the burden of all those you meet, for you will know that regardless of the pigment of his skin, the tongue in which he speaks, his belief, or nationality – you and he are one, for God is one. The great Sh’ma of the Hebrew confession of faith “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” will take on new meaning.

If God is one, there cannot be another; so in the end you and I will be the same father of the same son. I have been sent to convey that one thought to the world. I have taught it through the spoken word and recorded it in my book, Resurrection, that God’s true son is David. I have now completed the work I was sent to do.

The priests do not know the mystery. They are men without vision, reading a book they do not understand. To my mother, a priest was a wise man who could not be contradicted. I never argued with my mother about that, but I knew she was wrong. As a boy I had visions and knew the priests did not know what they were talking about; but mother could not understand how her little, uneducated boy could challenge that which she considered the wise men, because they could speak Latin and read Greek. But I knew their knowledge came from study, while my wisdom came from vision.

Having matured, I have been called and sent to reveal the true Son of God who unifies humanity. We will all know that one son to be our own son, for he will reveal each one of us as God the Father. Jesus Christ in you is God the Father, and David (in you) is His son. The day will come when David will awaken in you, rise in you, and call you Father, giving you a certainty which cannot be denied. Maybe from what you have heard tonight you may change your belief, but you will never know the certainty of Fatherhood until you see David as your son. And when everyone sees David as his son, are we not the one Father?

Tonight I urge you to play the part of Simon. If you do, you will not be neglecting but helping yourself; for as told us in the story of Job, as he prayed for his friends his own captivity was lifted. While locked in his own desire to free himself of his physical, social, and financial problems, Job forgot himself and prayed for his friends, and in so doing all that he had lost returned to him one hundred fold. As you pray for your friends you will discover your own captivity is lifted; your cross becomes lighter and lighter until finally you are light itself. So take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Ask for no thanks or financial gain in the doing; just know the joy of lifting the cross, for it is being lifted from your own shoulders. When I hear that a man’s needs have been provided for and he has become self-persuaded, it is true and it becomes true. I never tell him what I did. I simply revel in the joy and satisfaction of seeing this law of Christ fulfill itself. It never fails when put into practice.

Believe in the reality of your own imaginal acts, for faith is loyalty to unseen reality. Have faith in your imaginal act. Although unseen by the outer world as an external fact, your loyalty to its unseen reality will cause the unseen to become seen by the world. This is the practical side of this night. You and I can lift the cross from our own shoulders; for as I lift your cross I am lifting mine, and in a way I do not know the burden is lifted from me. Everyone you meet is yourself made visible, for there is nothing but yourself in the world.

As you read these passages I have quoted tonight, pull them together and you will have a beautiful mosaic. Remember, when you do it to one of the least of these you have done it unto me, the one the world is seeking. You may see me as an insignificant little man, but I am Christ, the Lord God Jehovah. Lift my burden for even the most insignificant other, and go your way. You may not recognize your harvest, as you may not remember the favor you granted another many years ago. Seeing him healthy and financially secure today you may forget what you did, and maybe even he will have forgotten he ever asked your help – but what does it matter? The burden has been lifted. Go forward and play the part of Simon, and the day when you least expect it you will find the symbol of your creative power as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. And then the 53rd chapter of Isaiah will be fulfilled, as your arm of God is revealed.

When scripture unfolds within you, you will know a thrill that is beyond ecstasy. Then you will no longer see scripture as secular history. You will know from experience that the story is supernatural, and has nothing to do with history as we understand it. The events spoken of by the apostles did not take place on earth, but in the soul of man as he walks the earth.

I have shared with you that which took place in my soul in the hope that I will find a few who will believe me to the point of putting my words into practice. I have unveiled myself to those who believe, and now they are beginning to be unveiled – while the rabbis and the priests who see me as an impostor remain veiled. Even to this day, when Moses is read the veil is on their minds. I pray for all of them because they are blinded to the truth by their refusal to accept any change in their fixed belief. I have come to do one thing: to make clear to the entire world who the true Son of God is who will unify the world.

Jesus Christ is God the Father and his son is David. When David calls you Father, you will know you are Jesus Christ, the Lord. If I am God the Father, who is my son? David. I tell you, David is not a physical being. It is in Spirit that he calls you Father, and scripture is fulfilled. Everyone will be called Father by the one being who is David, and if he calls you Father and he calls me Father, are we not the same being? Are we not the one God and Father of all? I tell you, without loss of your individual identity, you will know that you and I are one.

Now let us go into the silence.

BEHOLD THE DREAMER COMETH

December 22, 2013

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.

BELIEVE IN HIM

December 22, 2013

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.

You may think that the few hundred or thousand people I have told would mean nothing against three billion people in the world; but I know a remnant has been prepared, and they believe. That is all that is needed. Having heard, their belief causes it to happen in them; and salvation’s story spreads once more, until those without vision organize and make a business out of it. Then it will once more grow barnacles and become a tradition, minus the spirit.

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.

BELIEVE IT IN

December 22, 2013

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.

BIBLICAL LANGUAGE

December 22, 2013

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.

BLAKE ON RELIGION

December 22, 2013

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.”

BRAZEN IMPUDENCE

December 22, 2013

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.

BUILDING YOUR TEMPLE

December 22, 2013

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.

BY WATER AND BLOOD

December 22, 2013

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.

CATCH THE MOOD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

You will find tonight’s message a very practical one. I don’t think it will disturb anyone, but there are adjustments to be made concerning what man believes God to be, and what God really is. We are told in Scripture, in the birth of the twins, which begins the great drama as told in Scripture, “In your limbs…” and I am speaking now, not of anyone, but of you individually:

“In your limbs lie nations twain, rival races from their birth; one the mastery will gain, the younger o’er the elder reign.” (Genesis 25:23, Moffatt translation)

These are in you individually. We are told that the younger, which naturally is the second – the “second man” – is the Lord from Heaven. That’s the Second Man; He sleeps in you. You will rouse Him, and He will become the Master. He will reign. At the moment, in the majority of the world, they are totally unaware of it. So, He sleeps, and so He doesn’t reign. That one known in Scripture is called Jesus Christ; The Lord Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God!

Now, the whole vast world, and all within it, is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. That’s the whole of life: the appeasement of hunger. And there are infinite states from which the Lord may view the world to appease that hunger. The “first man” can’t do it. He can only feed upon what his senses dictate. Wherever he is, he feeds upon the facts of life as he sees the facts.

It takes the “Second Man” to disengage Himself from that restriction and enter into a state – any state in the world – and feed upon it, and then – in time – bring the “first man” to feed upon it.

We are told in the 14th chapter of John: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither be afraid. Ye believe in God, Believe in me also.” (John 14:1) Now, this is not a man talking to you from the outside. “Believe also in me.” “You believe in God, believe also in me.” In the same chapter He is going to tell you He is God! But what man would actually believe that this Presence within himself is God?

Now, He tells you: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) This is not another man speaking to you, other than yourself, “Be still, and know that ‘I Am’ is God.” Can you believe that? If you can believe that, then all things are possible to you. For, “all things are possible to God.” (Matthew 19:26) Can a man really believe that? That’s what I am told in the 46th Psalm, “Be still, and know that – I…”. Put the little word is in there now.

Now we are told, He sleeps, and then came the call, “Rouse thyself. Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Do not cast us off forever.” (Psalm 44:23) This one sleeps in man. Man has to rouse Him. He doesn’t know that his own wonderful human imagination is God!

Now, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? When I go I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2, 3) Now, this conversation takes place in you individually, between the two.

I am speaking now to my self, “In my Father’s house” – I am the Father “…are unnumbered mansions” – states of consciousness. “Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

I am standing here, and my senses tie me here in this room but I don’t want to be here. I want to be elsewhere. I know my bank balance. I know my obligations to life. I’m tied by what I know. The “outer man” feeds upon that, but he wants more than that. There is something in me – the “Second Man” who is born from Heaven – who is telling me there are “unnumbered mansions” into which I can go – you can’t go – I can go and prepare it for you. But, “when I go to prepare it for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye shall be also.” Now, how do I do it?

I take a look at my world, and I am very restricted. Everything about me is something I would like to break through – transcend it, become a bigger person, a more secure person, where I’m doing a greater job in the world. All these things I would like to do but reason tells me I am not doing it, and my senses confirm my reason. Now, is there something in me that is my True Self that can do it? Yes, my imagination can do it.

In my imagination, I go and prepare the state. I actually go into the state and fill that state with my own being, and view the world from that state. I don’t think of it; I think from it. When I think from it, I’m actually preparing that state.

Then I return to where I left this – “the outer man,” and once more fuse with it, and we become one, once again. Now I take him across a bridge of incidents – some series of events – that takes me towards the thing that I’ve prepared, and I take him with me and enter into the very state itself. He feeds now, literally, upon that state. This is what I call prayer. I don’t vote for it; I don’t petition, I ask no being in the world – no one, including what the world would say is God. For, when you find God by being still, and know that “I Am” is God, then to whom can you turn for anything in this world, if you really believe Scripture, “Be still and know that I am God”? (Psalm 46:10) If you are not familiar with Scripture, read it in the 46th chapter of the Psalms of David, the 10th verse “Be still, and know that I am God,” – then, to whom could you turn? It’s an inner communion with Self. But man talks to an outside god and pleads with an outside god, and begs an outside god.

This reminds me of a dinner party that William Lyons Phelps gave. If you do not know who he is – in fact, who he was, he was one of the truly great educators in our country in this twentieth century: William Lyons Phelps. He and Mrs. Phelps entertained Edna Ferber, the writer. As they sat down to dinner, Mrs. Phelps said to him, “William, will you please say grace.” He closed his eyes, bent his head, and after maybe ten or fifteen seconds he said, “Amen.” And she said to him, “Why, William, I did not hear one word that you said”; and he said to her, “I was not talking to you, my Dear…”.

People sit down to say grace as: “Bless the hands that prepared this food,” all these words meaning nothing. You go within, and you don’t petition: you appropriate. Prayer is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. I hope for so-and-so; I want it as an objective fact. Now, I must go within and appropriate it subjectively..

So, prayer is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. That is what I call “faith in God,” which is nothing more than faith in my Self, for the Self of man – the true identity of man – is God! That is the “Jesus Christ” of Scripture..

“Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourselves and see.” That is what we are told to do in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Read it in the 13th chapter, the 5th verse, of II Corinthians. “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5, Revised Standard Version).

Well, if He is in me, then where will I go to meet Him? How will I address Him? He is in me. He is in my very Self. I simply commune with my Self..

There are unnumbered states in the world, so I single out the state that I want to express in this world, and I don’t ask you or anyone else in the world if it is good for me. I don’t consult anyone. Does it come within the frame of the Golden Rule? What I am now asking, would I ask it for another? Would I ask another, if what I am seeking now for another is something I would ask for myself? Well, the Golden Rule is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you keep that in mind, you cannot go wrong..

What’s wrong with asking for anything in this world for another that you would ask for yourself? Is there anything wrong in being secure? Nothing. Anything wrong in being clean and wholesome and decent? Anything wrong in being one who contributes to the world’s good? What’s wrong with that? Is there anything wrong in being happily married, proud of the girl who bears your name, or she proud of the man whose name she bears? What is wrong with that?.

Forget that. The whole vast world is a field to reap. You don’t pick out this woman or that woman. Pick out the state. I want to be blissfully happy, and if I were, how would I see the world? And how would the world see me? Well, shut out the world and go within and appropriate that state. And from within, you let your friends see you, as they would have to see you if what now you are assuming that you are is really true..

That is why I have titled tonight’s talk, “The Mood” – catching the mood. This whole thing is based upon that mood. The 25th chapter of the book of Genesis: and she brought forth twins, for in her limbs were these rival races – rival races from their birth, called in Scripture “Esau” and “Jacob”; and you think they were two individuals who lived thousands of years ago. No, they are right here in everyone in this world! These are the eternal states of consciousness personified in Scripture as two little boys..

Scripture is not secular history. It is salvation history. And, so, they did not live thousands of years ago; they live now in you, and you have to give birth to both of them. You have given birth to the first one. The first one is your “outer man,” the man who is now a man of the senses – a man who is covered with hair, as we are told. Esau came out first, and he was covered with hair all over. Whether you be female or male, you are covered with hair all over. That is the external you, the man of the sense world..

Then in comes the “Second Son,” and he is the smoothest skin lad, called Jacob. The name “Jacob” means to supplant. He is going to supplant his brother; he is the second, but he will come first. The Second Man is the Lord from Heaven, and the Second Son is your own wonderful human imagination. When you stir it and rouse it and make him come into being, you can do wonders in this world..

Try it right now. You sit here in this room – I stand here; I could, in the twinkling of an eye, put myself outside of this room and view it from there, and see the interior of this room, not from this lectern, but see it from the outside. That is exercising the Inner Man. Go outside mentally, not physically, and view this room from the outside. While seated here, I can put myself in my hotel room downstairs, and then view this room and think of it, but thinking from my room downstairs. I can put myself in any part of the world and think from it, and think of the world and everything else. That is the secret: thinking from what I want, instead of thinking of what I want..

When I know what I want in this world, when I am thinking of it, it is always beyond me. When I know what I want, I enter into that state and think from it. Put yourself mentally into your own home tonight now, and view this building – this club – from your home, and you see this building, not from it; you think of it, and you are viewing it from your room..

Now, the state of consciousness to which you most constantly return is the place you really dwell – that habitual state from which you view the world. Do you view it from poverty, saying, “I am poor?” Do you walk the street feeling, “How poor I am?” You are then viewing the world from the state of poverty. Am I viewing the world from the state of one who is completely unknown and unwanted? Well, that’s my home. The place to which I habitually return constitutes my dwelling place. I need not dwell there..

“In my Father’s house are unnumbered mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” And when I go and prepare the place, I will return again and take you with me, that where I am – in that state prepared – you shall be also. So, I now take a state. I want to be known. I want to contribute to the world’s good. I want also to live well – and I mean well. I want to feel secure, not only financially, but secure socially, that when I enter a room I am not embarrassed, no matter who they are. They can have all the degrees in the world. They can come from all the great universities in the world and be honored by the world. But I want to stand in their presence and not feel little. I want to feel a man. I am not to bow my head in shame because of any restriction in my past. If I were born “behind the 8-ball” socially, financially, intellectually, it doesn’t matter. I want to feel important; I want to feel great. I want to feel right..

All right, what state would that be if it were true? I conceive a state that, if it were true, that would make all my wishes come true. I go into that state. Now, the first time I enter the state and view the world from it, it is wonderful, but I may never re-enter that state. Therefore, it is not my home. I want to make that state my perpetual home, so I automatically dwell in that state, and if I dwell in it so that automatically I am in that state, it becomes my dwelling place. So, “I will go and prepare a place for you.” I am not talking to you; I am talking to myself: “I will take you, Neville, born behind the 8-ball – born unknown, unwanted, poor – everything that is simply behind the 8-ball, and I am going to take you, Neville – now that you have found me, the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven, your own wonderful human imagination – now that you rouse me, I will go.”.

And I will dwell in the state and feel myself to be Neville – that “outer man” I just left on the chair or left on the bed, and I will see the world as Neville would see it if he were with me now. I view the world from that state. And, then, when it seems natural to me, I return to the physical “outer man” that I left on a chair – that I left on the bed and as I return, we fuse and become one person, not two. Then I move across a bridge of incidents that I don’t really, rationally build – it simply appears, and I move across a series of events that I do not reasonably determine – they simply happen. I will move across this bridge of events up to the state where I entered and now dwell. But when I get there, it seems so natural!.

The man that thought, because of his past limitations, he could never enter that state – now he finds himself in that state. No matter whom he meets, he meets them from that state, and it is perfectly natural to him. This is the story that Scripture teaches to you, to me, and to every one in the world. But until you find God, which is your own Self, you aren’t going to do it. “Be still, and know that ‘I Am’ Is God.” There is no other God!.

And you think that’s blasphemy? All right, the one who teaches the story was also accused of blasphemy, for he said, “I am God,” and they picked up stones to stone him. It doesn’t mean a man is making a bold statement on the outside. The “outer man” takes the facts of life – these are the “stones” – to stone him, and then he quotes Scripture, and he quotes the 82nd Psalm:.

“Is it not written in your scripture that I say, ‘Ye are gods, all of you sons of the Most High’? If, then, I say that I am the Son of God, and the Son of God and God are one and the same Being, why do you stone me when scripture teaches you, you are the sons of God?” (See John 10:34-37).

So they could not stone him then because he was only quoting their book. Well, I am only quoting tonight your book, which is my book. It’s the book to set every man in this world free if you know Who-You-Are. Your true identity is Jesus Christ! And Jesus Christ is not a being who came two thousand years ago and then departed. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the very ends of time.” (Matthew 28:20).

If He is with me always, where is He? He said, “I am with you always, to the very ends of time.” Then where is He? I surely know where He is..

The conversation now – I am quoting from the 8th chapter of the book of John. It is taking place in you. No one else is hearing it. I am only now quoting from a passage from the 8th [chapter] of John, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I say you will die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am He.” (John 8:23, 24) I am only quoting from the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John..

In Scripture, above and within are the same; below and without are the same. So, when you read, “I am from above,” he’s telling you, “I am from within”, for he tells you, “the kingdom of heaven is within you.” (Luke 17:21) So, I am from above, therefore I am from within. You, the ‘outer man’ – you are from without, therefore you are from below. You are of this world. I don’t have to remain anchored to what my senses dictate and tell me that I am. I need not be here. You, looking at me from the outside, as the “outer man,” will say, “Neville is on the platform.” Knowing my complete outer world, you would know my restrictions, my limitations. You do not know my ambitions, my dreams, my wishes. I, and I alone, know my ambitions and my wishes. The “Inner Man” knows them, and He knows how to enter these states and prepare a state for the “outer man” to fulfill it. The “outer man” can’t do it. The “outer man” is completely anchored by his senses and confirmed by his reason..

Now, let me share with you a simple story. At the time that it happened, it seemed an impossible thing. Right after the war was over, I took the first trip out with my wife and little girl to the Island of Barbados in the West Indies. I made no preparation for return. I sailed from New York. I thought I would go and stay a few months in the island with my family, who were all in Barbados, making no preparation for my return..

Then it came time for my return, for I had a schedule in New York in the first week of May. I arrived in Barbados the last of December and had these four heavenly months – or almost four. When I went to the steamship company, they showed me a list which was as long as from here to there [indicating] of people waiting to get on the boat. That was only in the Island of Barbados. There were lists equally long in all the other islands: Trinidad, St. Vincent, Grenada – all the islands, and only two ships servicing all the islands: one little one taking sixty passengers, and one taking a hundred and twenty-five passengers; and hundreds and hundreds in each island waiting..

Well, they said, “Why, Mr. Goddard, you couldn’t get out of this island until the month of October at the earliest.” I said, “Is that your final verdict?” They said, “Why, that’s final. Look at the list, and this is only in Barbados.”.

This is the month, now, of April. I never thought of applying before that. My brother Victor said, “How on earth could you have left New York, the capitol of the world – the financial capitol of the world – they know everything there how to do these things. Why didn’t you arrange there when you left for return?” I said, “It never occurred to me. It doesn’t really matter.”.

I sat in my hotel room in Barbados and got comfortable, and then I assumed that I was in a little boat – a little tender, taking me off to the waiting ship in the bay. I could feel the rock of the little boat. In that boat I placed my family – a few members of my family: my brother Victor, my sister Daphne, and one or two others, and naturally my wife and my little girl. Then I felt the ship come alongside the main ship that would take us back to New York. And, then, in my imagination I assumed that my brother Victor took my little girl and stepped on the gangplank and walked up with her and I aided my wife next, and then my sister Daphne, and then I got on, and we went up. When I got to the top of the gangplank – all in my imagination, giving it all the sensory vividness, giving it all the tones of reality – I have no committed stateroom, so I could not go down to the stateroom. I simply turned at the top of the gangplank, walked three or four steps, and then put my hands on the rail, so I could smell the rawness of the sea, I could feel the salt driven by the wind. I could feel it on the rail, and then I looked towards the island with nostalgia. I was leaving a perfectly lovely island with so many members of my family, and yet it was a divided feeling. I was happy to be leaving because I had to get back to New York on my way to Milwaukee, and then, at the same time, I was split in my emotion because there was a sadness – like a sweet sadness leaving them and still happy to go. And that’s the mood that I caught. I caught that feeling. I can’t tell you if you haven’t had the experience of going any place being divided between wanting to go and yet reluctantly so, because you are leaving something precious behind you. Well, that was my mood. I caught the mood. And then I kept on looking at the island, and then I broke it and here I am, sitting in my chair in the room in the hotel in Barbados!.

The next morning the phone rang. As I answered, it was the Alcoa Steamship Company calling: “Mr. Goddard, we’ve Just received a cable from New York canceling a passage sailing on the next ship, which could put you in New York on the first day of May. Would you like it for you, your wife and your daughter? It’s a smaller stateroom, really, there are only two bunks, but your little girl is only three years old, and so she could sleep either with you or with Mrs. Goddard, but there are two bunks, and there is a private bath. Everything is perfect but you know; the ship is small. It will only carry sixty passengers.”

I said, “I’ll be right down.” So, I went down, and I thought I would find out some more details. I asked the agent, “Why the cancellation?” “Well,” she said, “I could only speculate. They didn’t tell us: they cabled us. There was a cancellation for the return trip.” I said, “All right, it’s canceled. Why didn’t you give it to any of the others waiting?” There were hundreds and hundreds waiting. “Well,” she said, “we have one lady here – an American lady who has been bothering us week after week to get her out of Barbados back to New York, so we called her first, and she said, ‘It’s not convenient for me to go now.’ So, then we called you because you have three to go, and I thought you could use the room for the three of you. And we will not notify any of the other hundreds waiting.”

So, I asked no further questions. I took it and got back in time for my place in New York and then my place in Milwaukee.

When I first tell that story, the usual reaction is: Was that a fair thing to do? Can you imagine that! Was that a fair thing to do with all the others who were waiting? I wasn’t running the Alcoa Steamship Company. I was applying the principle of God. I wouldn’t care if one million people were there; I’d jump over one million. That’s not my concern. I am simply applying the Law of God: “When you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will,” as I am told in the 11th chapter of the book of Mark, 29th verse, and whatever you do, whatever you say, if you do not doubt that it will come to pass, it will be done for you. Well, I did what I’m told in Scripture I ought to do, believe that I had received it, and act upon that belief. So, I acted upon the belief. What would I do if it were true? I would go up the gangplank.

In those days, back in 1945, we did not have a deep-water harbor; we have one now. But then you had to go out to the ship by a little tender, so I did exactly what I would have to do if I went aboard the ship. So, I got aboard the little ship, and then, as we got to the big ship, strangely enough, my brother Victor went up with my little girl in his arms – the very first one to step off. And then here came my wife, here came my sister, just in the order that I had imagined it. I wouldn’t care if that order was broken or not, but it did happen in the order that I imagined it. So, I tell you, I have found Him. Who? Found who? I have found the Lord Jesus Christ. You did? What does he look like? He looks just like me! Have you found Him? Well, don’t look at me, because when you find Him, He’s going to look just like you! That’s the Lord Jesus Christ – just like you. There is no other Lord Jesus Christ.

He actually became you, that you may become the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you see Him, He is just like you.

So, do not turn to any one in this world and say, “There he is,” for that’s a lie, or, “Here he is” – that’s a lie. So, anyone telling you that Neville is the Lord Jesus Christ – your Jesus Christ, deny it! Deny it completely. Neville is not the Lord Jesus Christ for you. But I have found the Lord Jesus Christ in me as my own wonderful human imagination. And I share with you what I have found. One day you will find Him as your own wonderful human imagination. Then will come the day that everything said of the Lord Jesus Christ in Scripture, you are going to experience in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience – everything said about him. Then you will know who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Then you will know who the Father is, who – really – God is!

Meanwhile, test him. Go to the extreme test. I tell you, you will find Him never failing. He’s your own wonderful human imagination.

Well, in this story that we started tonight, the two sons are brought now to the father. The father is Isaac, and Isaac is blind. There were two sons; the first one is Esau. He is covered with hair. That’s every child born of woman; that is the “outer man,” for hair means the most external, objective thing in the world. In man, the hair comes first, then you get the skin, then you get the fat, then you get the bones, but the hair is the most external part of man. So, he is covered with hair. The next one has no hair. He is hairless. He is Jacob, The word means supplanter.

The father has requested a meal. That is why I told you earlier the whole vast world – the whole of life is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. So, the father is hungry, and he wants venison properly prepared as he always loves it and he gives that command to his first son, Esau. Esau was a hunter. He goes hunting for the venison, and prepares it to please his father.

Jacob overhears the request of his father. Remember, his name is supplanter but the command was given to his brother Esau, So, he slays a goat and skins it, and puts the skin upon his body to deceive his father into believing that he is Esau. He prepares the goat and brings it to his father, and he says, “Father,” and Isaac answers, “Yes, my son.” Then Isaac said, “I am blind, my son. I cannot see. Come close that I may feel you, that I may touch you.” And covered with the skin of the goat, he comes close, and Isaac stretches forth his hand and touches him. He said, “You know, your voice sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like my son Esau,” and then he gave him the blessing. And, then, having been given the blessing, Jacob disappears.

Then his son Esau comes with the venison, and he said, “Who are you?” He said, “I am your son Esau.” “Well,” he said, “it must have been your brother who came, and I thought him to be you, and I gave him the blessing; and I cannot reverse it. I cannot take it back. I have blessed him, and the blessing remains his.”

So, you close your eyes, and you are Isaac; you cannot see. Isaac is blind. Shut your eyes, and you can’t see the room. Now, inwardly you have the two sons. The outer room is your Esau. You shut it out completely, and they both go hunting. Esau comes after; Jacob comes first, and he gives the tones of reality to his father. His father is his own wonderful “I AM.” Well, that’s God! God’s name forever is “I AM.” So, I AM is waiting to feel the tones of reality of what he wants, and he feels it to be so real, so natural.

Now, he knows this thing is subjective, so he said, “You sound like Jacob, but come closer, my son, that I may feel you”, and he feels him as I felt the rail on the ship, as I could smell the salt of the sea in the wind, as I could see mentally the island, as I could feel the ship rolling a little under my feet. All this was the tone of reality. This, now, is Esau; it seems real, and so I am giving a reality to this state – I am giving a blessing to it.

Then I open my eyes to find I am sitting on a chair in my hotel room. Well, suddenly Esau returns. Well, Esau was the place that I left. The room that I sat in was my Esau; that was the objective world. It comes back. And I say, “What have I done?” I went into a state and I clothed it with reality. I gave it all the tones of an objective world, and it seemed so real to me that I gave it the blessing to be real – to be born. Now this comes back, and without one word spoken, it is telling me, “You deceived yourself. You were deceived by my brother, the subjective state called Jacob.” And I say to myself – knowing who God really is, He can’t take back His blessing. He gave it the right to be born – the right to become objective – the right to become real, and in 24 hours it was born, – it was real.

And, then, three weeks later I sailed on that ship and completed the entire journey. I’ve repeated it over and over again, and it never fails. And those who will believe it and who will put it to the test cannot fail. They cannot fail. This is the principle of Scripture.

So, will you actually give it the tones of reality? Will you actually, first of all, believe that the God that you now worship as something without, actually exists within you as your own wonderful human imagination? If you will believe that, and not think me blasphemous for telling it and think me something accursed for having spoken it – but may I tell you, I hope for your sake you will believe it. But really, in my heart of hearts, whether you believe it or not, I am not concerned, because the day will come you will have to believe it, because you will experience it. If only I can aid you to hasten the day – that’s why I am here. But to actually say I am going to hit you over the head and make you believe it – no. I am not indifferent to your believing it; I can only appeal to you to believe it for your own good, that you may take whatever you have and transcend it by the use of this Law. Whatever you have in this world, may I tell you, no one is really satisfied! I dined well today, but tomorrow I am going to be hungry. And hunger is forever with man, and God is the ultimate satisfaction of hunger, but that hasn’t yet come upon the majority.

He tells us in the 8th chapter, the 11th verse, of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the world; it will not be a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.” Now, that comes at the very end, for the average man is not hungry for the word of God. He is complacent. He will say, “I am a Christian!” So, what! “I am a Christian. I go to church. I contribute to the church,” and so he thinks that means all that he does as a Christian – it stops right there.

Well, the hunger is not satisfied, because when He sends that hunger upon the individual, nothing but an experience of God can satisfy that hunger. Well, until He sends that hunger, all the other hungers can be satisfied, like the hunger for security, the hunger for a better job, the hunger for a raise in authority in your present position, the hunger for – you name it. Every hunger can be satisfied if you apply this principle. But then will come that day He will send the famine upon you, for you are the earth of which He speaks. It hasn’t a thing to do with the world, the famine in the world, or whether there is famine all over the world, because they don’t know how to satisfy their hunger. There is famine, but that is not the famine of which he speaks. He says it’s not a hunger for bread; it’s not a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God!

So, I am giving you the Word of God as I personally have experienced it. So, tonight you try it. Close your eyes to the obvious. That’s Esau; send him hunting. And, then, become self-deceived. In his absence, bring in the “second son,” who is the Lord from Heaven, and clothe him in the tones of reality, and feel how real it is. Give him all sensory vividness, and when it takes on the tones of reality, open your eyes! Then Esau comes back from the hunt, and then you tell him what you’ve done, and he cries out because your son – the “second man” – has deceived you and betrayed him the second time.

Every day you can apply this principle and become self-deceived, but it works. But always keep it within the frame of the Golden Rule, so that no one will be hurt. I do not care who did not get the passage north. I do not care what prompted the woman not to take it. I do not care what prompted the passenger from New York to cancel it. I have no complaints, no words; I simply did what I was called upon to do. I wanted to get out. I found myself locked in – locked in until October at the earliest, with my commitments in Milwaukee going. I couldn’t do that. I had to get back, and get back, I did!

So, I tell you, this principle cannot fail you. But we are the operant power. And you do not get down on your knees and pray to an external god. Do exactly what the great William Lyons Phelps did, and say to the whole vast world, “I am not talking to you, my Dear,” – I am communing with my Self. And if I give thanks for what has happened, I don’t give it to you; I give it to the Being-within-me – constant praise for this miraculous power that is housed within me. And you walk in the consciousness of being constantly praiseful for this miraculous power that became you, that you may become It! And that power is the Lord Jesus Christ who is in you, and there is no other.

So, when the whole vast world is looking for Him to come from without, as the great evangelist today has said, “It is immanent. He is on us. He is coming. I am here to greet Him.” He will wait forever in vain. For when He comes, He is not coming from without. When He comes, He rises from within, and you are He! So, he’s reaching millions of people, but he’s in kindergarten. And what do you expect? He cannot give them more than milk. But in time, you have got to be weaned from milk, and take meat, and then the true meaning of the great mystery of the Christian faith.

So, the world has accepted it in a little story. All well and good, but don’t forever and forever go on seeing only the little story. Learn to extract the meaning of the story, and hope it unfolds within you.

Meanwhile, you apply what you have heard tonight, and before I leave the City at the end of next week, you should be able to tell me that what you tonight desire you have.

Now let us go into the Silence.

CHRIST BEARS OUR SINS

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 2-24-1969

Peter tells us that Christ bears our sins in his body on the cross. And the prophet Isaiah said: “He takes our infirmities and bears our diseases.”

Who is this being who bears our sins, our infirmities, and our diseases? Christ! Our wonderful human imagination! When you are in pain, or experiencing deep sorrow, your imagination is doing the suffering. If a friend tells you he is not feeling well, or is in great pain, and you tell him that his imagination – called Christ – is doing the suffering, your friend would not believe you, because he conceives Christ to be someone other than himself. But Christ is the human imagination, and until man discovers this for himself the Bible will make no sense to him whatsoever.

We are told: “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.” That word is your I Am! And if the Word is God and dwells in you as your awareness, is not God doing the suffering when you say, I am suffering? Having just revealed God’s name, you are confessing that God is in pain; therefore, does He not bear all the sufferings of the world in his body while he is on the cross of mankind?

When I speak of the joy of awakening to the knowledge of who God really is, I would think everyone would be eager to experience that awareness; yet only an nth part will say, Yes! A friend wrote, saying: “My husband applied for and received a temporary position as a carpenter, working for the Los Angeles school system. When he was let out he said, `They will call me back for another temporary period.’ I suggested that if he wanted to work there on a permanent basis he could, if he would imagine it. Instead he gave me all kinds of reasons why a permanent position was not possible.

“Recently he was called back for another temporary position. When I reminded him of what he had imagined six months ago he did not want to recognize his harvest of the seed he had planted and became very angry. As he spoke, our souls made contact and I heard him say, `I am asleep and don’t you dare awaken me!’ “

Her husband, like 99% of the people of the world, does not want to be awakened, feeling that if he awakens to a higher level he will lose the pleasures of the flesh.

A friend, a very successful playwright, with many famous stars as his clients, used to listen to my visions and my interpretations of scripture for a short time, then tell me he had heard enough. He didn’t want to go beyond the point of curiosity, to become interested and desire the spiritual world, because he was afraid he would lose his physical contact with life and he was only interested in sex. He had money and everything money could buy, and he loved playing the field in the theatrical world.

He died a few years ago and is now restored to a body just like the one he had here, only young, full of vigor, eager to continue his sexual life. This man has not felt the famine which is sent. It is not a hunger for food or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God. And until that famine possesses you God’s word will not hold your interest. I could go on the radio and TV or write articles for the newspapers regarding my experiences, but – like the lady’s husband – they would say, “I am asleep and don’t you dare awaken me!”

Now, God and his word are one, so if God sent his word, then he sent himself declaring: “He who sees me, sees him who sent me; for I am the word which will not return unto me void, but must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I was sent.”

The outer man is the external word, which comes first. The inner man is then sent to animate and eventually give life to the outer man by fulfilling the word. And when the outer man hungers for the word of God, everything said in scripture concerning God’s plan of self-redemption fulfills itself in him. He doesn’t redeem someone else, as there is no one else. We are the gods who came down and God can only redeem himself by fulfilling scripture.

Now another lady shared this vision saying: “I am standing in the midst of an enormous crowd. Everyone around me is screaming, `He is crazy. He is mad. He is crazy. He is mad,’ over and over again. Walking quickly to discover who they are referring to, I see a man standing alone at the head of the crowd. Recognizing him as the man I love, I run to him and cry, `I love you, I love you.’

“Although the crowd surges upon him and beats him, I continue to express my love. Suddenly he places his hands upon my neck. I feel his thumbs press into my throat and feel as though I am going to die. Then the pressure is released. The man raises his hands, which become two white wings, which caress me with an indescribable love as I awake.”

That night this lady fulfilled the 40th, 48th, 51st, 52nd and 53rd [chapters] of Isaiah. I say to her without any doubt in my heart, that she is very near salvation. Everything in her wonderful vision was made visible. She was the man and the crowd. She sent herself through hell because she loves herself, just as you and I do. In Blake’s lovely song, “A Little Boy Lost”, he said:

“Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible to thought
A Greater than itself to know.”

How can thought know a thought greater than itself? How could you love another more than yourself? It is impossible, for there is no other.

Love is the being playing every part. Love is the crowd, the tempters, and the one abused. Feel distress, and you are abusing Christ by saying, I am distressed. Feel ashamed, limited, inadequate or afraid, and God is experiencing them all; for He is your awareness, believing himself to be ashamed, limited, inadequate, or afraid and dying in your sins.

Just as my friend heard the vision tell her to change the comma, for the statement should read: “Before Abraham, was I am,” here again we find that unless you believe your I am is the one you have worshiped on the outside, you die in your sins; for your I am was before Abraham.

It is Christ who bears all of your afflictions, your sorrows and diseases. There is no record of a man who took upon himself a terminal disease while the one he took it from was set free. The implication is there, for – bearing our afflictions and weakness – God has the power to set man free. But Christ is not someone external to yourself. The Universal Christ is a diffusion of an individuality. You say I am, I say I am. We are the same I am, who is Christ, who is God, who is Jehovah – for there is nothing but I am!

Christ, who is your very self, bears all of your afflictions, your weaknesses, and sins; but this is difficult for man to understand. Several years ago I gave a series of nineteen lectures in San Francisco, attended by a lady and her lawyer son. At the end of the series the lady questioned her son, saying: “Do you believe Neville?” And answering with his rational mind he said: “He sounds sincere. He may be sincerely wrong, but I’m sure he is sincere.”

At that time the son was living with his mother. Every night before retiring they would remind each other to put the law of identical harvest into practice. When I returned to San Francisco the next year I learned that this man had formed an organization which was in the process of building the largest and most modern co-op in the Bay Area, called the Comstock. This project was followed by building up the peninsula and now this gentleman is worth millions.

Both mother and son used the law to achieve their every goal, yet she admitted she did not understand what I meant when I said Christ suffers for her. Although she could tell me: “I have a toothache,” she couldn’t grasp the fact that she is her imagination and therefore the cause of the toothache as well as the wonderful co-op.

If you are suffering, Christ is suffering, for his name is I am, and there is no other Christ. God actually became flesh and dwells in you. Once you realize this you will never turn to another. This gentleman has made a fortune, yet he does not understand how it all came about, because the hunger is not upon him. Although it would not be necessary, he is not willing to give up his enormous earthly holdings to have the experiences which would result in regeneration.

You do not kill desire. You do not have yourself castrated. You are simply beyond the organization of sex and your desire for earthly things ceases to be. Ninety-nine per cent of the people here desire worldly pleasures, while I speak of a pleasure that transcends this world – where one lives in a world of reality and creativity. But until that famine comes, you will continue to desire things that die in this world.

Now, another lady shared this experience, saying: “In my vision I knew you had died, yet you had returned to lecture and teach as usual. You were wearing my earthly father’s face, yet I knew the bone structure to be yours. Everyone called you the Father, but not knowing my earthly father, they could not see his face, only yours. As I woke I knew that the face I touched on the surface would be that of my earthly father, but its structure would be that of the Father.”

There is only one Father. It is He who wears every mask. In this wonderful experience, she saw her earthly father wearing the frame of the Father, because the Father is a protean being and assumes every face. She saw the foundation, the bone structure of the man who told her salvation’s story, wearing the face of her earthly father.

We are told that when God took upon himself the sins of the world, he was a man of sorrow, despised and rejected by men. There is no description of the man in whom God awoke because he is never a sculptured, beautiful man on the outside, but a perfectly normal person.

This lady said that she is very fond of the Book of John, as it seems to be more loving than any other book in the Bible. I will go along with that. She felt that the answer to the experience I just spoke of would come to her from the Book of John. I suggest she read the 10th chapter of John. In it Christ is called a man who has a devil and they question why listen to him. You, my dear, are that central figure, and you are also the crowd screaming at yourself; and you deny the existence of the Christ within, for there is no other. There is only God.

You can put God to the test, and if He proves himself in the testing then you will know God is your own wonderful human imagination. If you want the joy of marriage, a love affair, or a romance, you can test God by assuming the one you desire is with you now. And to the degree you persist in that assumption, it will be yours to experience. Do not be concerned as to how or when it will happen; simply persist in the assumption that it has happened, and when it does you will know who God is.

My wife woke too early to get up this morning, so she thought about what she wanted most, and that was for her husband and daughter to be blissfully happy. Thinking of what she could do to make it so, she realized that it was something they alone must decide. Then she fell asleep dwelling on their happiness and this is her dream: Seeing me lying on a couch she heard me say: “I don’t feel comfortable here,” and she replied: “I know – you don’t like to sleep on the first floor, but would rather be elevated and sleep above.”

Then the dream changed and she was putting a puzzle together with our daughter Vicki, who began to laugh as she picked up a piece of the puzzle and watched it fall into its perfect place. Looking at Vicki she said to herself: “I have never seen her look so pretty and be so blissfully happy.” Then she awoke. Her desire for happiness was answered in the depth of her being and must now come to the surface.

Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination and his story is all about you. Told in the third person, it is written as though another is doing all the suffering for you; yet you know you are the one who is suffering. I tell you, that unless you believe your awareness of being is God you will continue to miss your mark, thereby remaining in sin.

I am is the key to scripture. Called Jesus Christ in the New Testament, God the Father’s name is revealed in the Old Testament as I am. Having come into the world to fulfill the word, you cannot return empty but must accomplish that which you purposed and prosper in the thing for which you sent yourself. After inspiring the prophets to tell your story, you came not only to fulfill their prophecy, but to share your experiences to encourage others.

The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint which you will fulfill, for you are the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Jesus Christ of the New. You may either accept this truth or reject it, but what I am telling you is true. Christ is not a little man, but the universally diffused individuality of which we are. So when one awakes and the second one follows, the third will awaken and eventually all of the universally diffused individuals will awaken in that one glorious body called the kingdom of heaven. Having come into and overcoming the world of death, we will be victorious over our challenge.

The men of science tell us that the universe is melting and will one day come to its end. I am not going to question this, but I do know that Imagination came into this world of death to overcome it. I also know that nothing dies, because we are the immortal Imagination who clothed himself in these garments of flesh which die, but we – their life-giving spirit – cannot die.

I cannot force anyone to want my experiences. My family in Barbados all live in comfort and know they earn much more than I do. They judge a man by what he has in this world and are not interested in who he is. They cannot understand why a man of my age continues to do what I am doing, when I could move to Barbados and live in clover with all expenses paid by the business. And I can’t persuade them to listen to me because the hunger is not upon them.

Until that hunger for the hearing of the word of God possesses you, you will continue to be possessed by the world. You may become the Pope, but that does not mean you hunger for the word of God. It may mean that you hunger for the power that rests in the office of the Pope, the hunger to be recognized and praised. But when the hunger to experience the word of God possesses you, you will know you – the Word – sent yourself. You will then understand the words: “He who sees me, sees him who sent me,” for you will fulfill God’s word.

There must be two witnesses: one external and one internal. The external witness is scripture, and you who have the spiritual experience are the internal witness. Knowing your experiences parallel the scriptures, you know that the Father in the depths of your own being watches to see that all the pieces are in place and the image of his declared purpose is perfect.

Having prophesied what must take place, God will fulfill it; and you – the image of the invisible God – will radiate his glory and become the express image of his person. Then you will be used as the bone structure on which every face will be placed to reveal to the one who has the experience, the meaning of being God the Father.

In my friend’s vision everyone referred to me as the Father. Her father was a father, but I am the Father upon which every father’s face is placed. She was aware that I had died and had returned, only to tell the story of God’s plan of salvation in order to redeem myself, for there is only God in the world.

Now let us go into the silence.

www.Hypersmash.com

CHRIST IN MAN

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-17-1966

Christ is the reality, the God that is in Man. It is he who breaks down the dividing wall between himself and Man and makes of the two, one new Man. Is this all done on the other side of the veil, or is there something that we can do on this side of that dividing wall? Let me share with you a story of a very dear friend of mine, one who has had most of my experiences. Listen to me carefully, for God speaks to man through the medium of dream and unveils himself through revelation. This is his letter.

“I awoke at 6:00 o’clock in the morning. It was too early to get up, so I decided to lie in bed and do some purposeful imagining. Then this thunderous voice came from within me declaring, ‘I AM GOD! I AM SELF-CONTAINED! I AM SELF SUFFICIENT!’ It kept repeating these words over and over and over until finally I said to it, ‘I know, and I’m trying to do something about it, but you are speaking so loudly I cannot imagine.’ But the voice continued ‘I AM GOD! I AM SELF-CONTAINED! I AM SELF SUFFICIENT!’ over and over again. It seemed to me like rape, if you can’t prevent it, relax and enjoy it, so I did, and fell asleep enjoying this declaration.

“Then I found myself in a vast desert of nothingness. Not a blade of grass, not a shrub, not a cactus, nothing but an infinite desert. I am holding some golf balls in my hand. I throw one and instantly a beautiful home and yard appear in technicolor. I throw another and a second home and yard appear, this time with people around it. Taking another ball I threw it across the way and a wonderful putting green appeared. Then a man at my side said, ‘Isn’t that terrific. You put the ball right next to the hole.’ And I answered, ‘No, I don’t do it that way. I put the ball down and put the hole next to it!”

“Then I created a huge gate and we walked through it into a miserable scene of dilapidated house and a streetcar in the last stage of decay. I took a ball and tried to throw it, but no matter how I tried to release it, it would not leave my hand. Then I said to myself, ‘Maybe it is beyond my power.’ And as I contemplated this scene the ball was released and the house was transformed into an ultra-modern hotel as the streetcar became a streamlined bus which quickly moved away.”

It was so easy for me to create out of nothing, but when I came upon a scene out of the past, that I know to be a fact, I couldn’t change it, for I couldn’t let go of the past. But I persisted and persisted and I was eventually rewarded, as the house was turned into a glorious new hotel and the streetcar into a streamlined bus.

“Then” he said, “I came upon a scene which resembled the Miracle Mile on Wilshire Boulevard with an island up the middle. But, in place of the usual well-dressed men and women, I saw young boys in messy pants and girls in bikinis. So I decided to throw another ball, and as I did they were transformed into beautifully dressed ladies and gentlemen, dining under umbrellas and served by elegantly dressed waiters. Then I turned to my friend and said, ‘You know, maybe I should have left them as they were.’ Now, he’s a very humorous man, may I tell you, and he always ends his letters to me on a humorous note, so he added, “and I awoke not a moment too soon.”

Now, God speaks to man through the medium of dream. Although there were no golf courses two thousand years ago, the word “ball” appears in the 22nd chapter of Isaiah. When you read it you think God rejected a man, but all of these are states of consciousness. God rejected the state, not its occupant, for God is playing all the parts, but we are in states. Then he turns him into the one whose shoulder the peg will be nailed. And on him will rest the burden, the responsibility of the house of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the 10th chapter of I Samuel, the prophet Samuel speaks to Saul saying, “The spirit of the Lord shall come upon you and you shall be turned into another man.” God rejects the state of Saul and turns him into an entirely different state.

Now listen carefully to what you can do on this side of the veil to break down that wall between the two, and make of two, one new man. “Jesus came into the world preaching the gospel of God saying, ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ Repent and believe in the gospel.” Believe my testimony, for all the promises of God have found their fulfillment in me. Believe my gospel and repent, for the story of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness, and forgiveness tests man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite.
When you see anything in a dilapidated state it is a past state, old and fixed. But you can change it by throwing the ball. If, at first the ball will not leave your hand because of the obvious facts before you, persist. “How long, O Lord, must I forgive the brother who sins against me? Seventy times seven.” Do it and do it and do it until you succeed in letting go of the past and seeing what you wish in its place. Persist and persist and persist until you can actually let it go.

Jesus tells the parable of the woman who comes to a constable who, although he didn’t fear God or respect man, rose and gave her what she wanted because of her persistence. Her constant comments forced him to give her what she desired. The story is also told of a man who came at midnight wanting something to feed a stranger in his house. The man from above said, “It is late and my children are in bed and I cannot come down and open the door,” but, because the man persisted, he was given what he wanted.

You may think there is no way out of your present turmoil, but I don’t care how fixed that seeming turmoil is, if you persist and persist and persist, he who is from above has to come down and grant your request. Practice repentance on this side of the veil while the work is going on in a hidden manner on the other side, and the wall will become thinner and thinner until the shell is broken and Christ is born. And who is he? I AM. After you break the shell it’s not Jesus and you, there is Jesus only. And on that day the Lord shall be one and his name One.

It was so easy for my friend to create out of nothing. When he threw the ball in the vast desert of emptiness a beautiful home and lawn instantly appeared in technicolor. Another ball and another beautiful home and yard with people all around, then a golf course and a gate through which he and his friend passes. Now he views pictures of the past – a home decayed beyond repair and an ancient streetcar. Desiring to change them he discovered that he couldn’t let go of the past. But he persisted and eventually succeeded. He realized that it only took five seconds for him to create out of nothing, but it took so long for him to change the past. Although the ball had left his hand, he felt that it wasn’t going to work, but it did, as the house became a beautiful hotel and the streetcar a streamlined bus. Then the transformation was easy along Miracle Mile, for he had succeeded in taking that which was ancient and having transformed it, he changed the boys and girls into ladies and gentlemen without hesitation. That’s what you and I are called upon to do.

In the earliest gospel, the book of Mark, we are told that after John (reasoning consciousness) was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” What he is saying is, “Believe my testimony, for all that I tell you is but the fulfillment of scripture.” Standing before you tonight I can say, unschooled, unlettered, unknown, uneducated by human standards, yet scripture, the only reality in the world, has been fulfilled in me. Everything in this world will pass away, but God’s Word is forever and his Word is being fulfilled in everyone.

God is not condemning any man, for they are only states, and we must learn to distinguish between the occupant of the state and the state he occupies. God does not reject man, but the state, and puts man into another state. I know that since this man heard my message years ago he has been daily practicing revision. Revision is repentance and revision results in repeal. When you revise a memory that is fixed you have repealed it. He repealed the dilapidated home and streetcar. Here is the new man fulfilling the 22nd chapter of Isaiah. Although the word “golf ball” is not there, the word “ball”, that which turns upon itself and repeats a memory image, is. But, holding the ball in his hand (the symbol of God’s power and wisdom) he persisted and exercised his power.

You have that power. Test it by bringing a seemingly hopeless case before your mind’s eye and revise it. Persist in revising it until you can let go of that ball by feeling the breath of relief because it is done. If tomorrow does not bring the confirmation, or next week, wait, for it is done. And in a way that no one on earth could devise, it will come into your world and you will see the results of what you did.

So I ask everyone to practice revision. Revise the past. I don’t care what it is, revise it and the past will conform to your dream of what it ought to have been and appear before you. Then the new man will rise within you and it will no longer be you and Christ, but only Christ. We are told in the 9th chapter of Ezekiel to follow the man who is clothed in linen. He will go through the city and leave a mark on the foreheads of men, women and children. “Follow after him, and everyone who does not bear the mark, whether he be an old man, an old woman, a maiden, a young boy or a child, slaughter them and your eye must have no pity.” Then, in the 22nd chapter of Revelation he turns and those who have the mark come before him. They see his face and his name is on their foreheads.

That name is Jesus and Jesus means Jehovah. He only redeems himself. Don’t think because of this strange imagery that there are those who are lost. Everyone, at a certain moment in time, is slaughtered because of the state he is in, but the play goes on and he plays other parts and still, more parts, until finally he plays the part of the selected one. And in that final part the mark is on his forehead and the name Jesus is his own. So in the end there is Jesus only. Everyone will be redeemed. Infinite mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. There is only one body, only one God, only one being, so when you are redeemed you are He.

So tonight, begin to practice the art of repentance, for everything can be redeemed. Now, repentance is not to feel remorseful or regretful. I don’t care what you have done; you don’t have to feel remorseful about it. You had to do it because of the state you were in at the time. Repentance is practicing the art of moving into the opposite state. You don’t feel sorry for yourself and wallow on some weeping wall when you repent. Your sins may be as scarlet, but through repentance they shall be white as snow.

It does not matter what a man has ever done, he is only expressing a state. When in the state of murder he must murder, or in the state of the robber he has to steal. We condemn the occupant as though he did it, but he is in a state, which he entered wittingly or unwittingly. So Blake said, “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them in the state of sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it left paradise following the serpent.”

Scripture tells us there are two things, which God finds impossible to forgive. The first is our failure to believe that I am He and the second is the eating of the tree of good and evil. Man’s unwillingness to believe that I am He is the fundamental sin; for God, whose name is I am, became man that man might become God. My unwillingness to believe that I am he who causes me to breathe, to think and to move, as well as going through life condemning good and evil as I see it is unforgivable to God. But then comes this wonderful revelation, “I know from the Lord Jesus Christ that there is nothing unclean in itself, but any man who sees anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” And as he lives with it, his state allows it to be seen as unclean. That’s life.

On this side of the veil let us practice repentance and transform any unlovely past. Let the mind store a past worthy of recall, for eventually everything that is unlovely is going to be destroyed, and although the mind seemingly vanishes, man does not, for man is God. In the real sense of the word, there is no death for really nothing dies. The actor leaves the stage and seems to be gone, but he isn’t dead, for the supreme actor is God and he is playing all the parts. “The deceiver and the deceived are his.” I have deceived and I have been deceived; therefore I am both. After I have played every state I am called upon to believe the testimony of one who has experienced scripture, then to constantly practice this wonderful art of repentance.

Repent and repent and repent. As you see someone in need, change him. That’s repentance. You could argue with him, tell him it serves him right, that if he hadn’t done what he did he wouldn’t be paying the price, but do not condemn him. He is in a state and must reap the results of the state into which he has entered. It is only a state and since the occupant is immortal, as you are, you can repent and place him in a different state.

It does not matter what you have done, you are immortal and one day you will hear the same words my friend heard. “I AM GOD! I AM SELF-CONTAINED! I AM SELF SUFFICIENT!” Right now that same voice is screaming in the depth of your soul. It hasn’t stopped since the beginning of time, but the wall is too thick for you to hear it. But when the wall becomes very thin, you will hear it. He heard the words as the wall was breaking, making of the two one new man, thus bringing peace. That’s what you are told in the 2nd chapter of Ephesians. “I bring peace by breaking down the wall that separates the two.”

Have you ever lived in an apartment where the walls are so thin you can hear your neighbors whisper? Practice repentance and you wall will become so thin you will hear God, the eternal I am in you; proclaim what He is. “I am the everlasting! I am eternal! I am self-sufficient! I am self-contained! I am God!” He heard the voice so loud and so persistent that he decided to test this power, which symbolized itself as the hand where the ball was placed. Then he created, changed and revised all demonstrations of God’s power that he now knows himself to be.

Revise, then drop it as he dropped the ball. Release the past and hold onto the vision of what you want in its place. With this power you can completely redeem the past, “And God requires the past.” And, although your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.

Now let us go into the silence.

Q: What does it mean in the book of John when it says, “Salvation is of the Jews?”

A: Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. Bishop Pike said, “I am a Jew because I am a Christian. I could be a Jew and not be a Christian, but I cannot be a Christian and not be a Jew.” Christianity comes out of Judaism. It was revealed through the prophets and the Judea-Christian Bible, to me, is the only true revelation of God’s plan of salvation. All the others are based on secular history. But scripture is not secular, but salvation history describing eternal states through which man passes.

Salvation is of the Jews, as it was revealed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New. “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day. And the scriptures preached the gospels to Abraham beforehand.” Having had a preview of what the fulfillment would be, you entered the state of faith called Abraham, by believing the most incredible story in the world. Then the dream descended and amnesia possessed you. You entered a deep and profound sleep and are now dreaming the dream of life.

Good night.

CHRIST IN YOU

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 05-06-1969

“Examine yourselves to see if you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves! Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Now, faith is not complete until through experiment it becomes experience! When you test the Christ in you and prove from experience that it works, then you have the faith. But first you must find who Christ is, where he is, and what he is. You are not called upon to test a tradition of man as something on the outside, but Jesus Christ who is in you!

Perhaps you heard on the news tonight that the Catholics have just eliminated forty saints. For hundreds of years millions of people have prayed to Saint Christopher, yet now they are being told that he never existed. How many St. Christopher medals and figurines were sold to protect those who went into battle or traveled afar? Believing he was the saint of the traveler, how many put their faith in him? Santa Barbara was named after Saint Barb, who is now believed to be non-existent, yet the cause of the recent broken oil line!

If you will read scripture carefully (and not go along with the herd) you will see that there is no intermediary between yourself and God. No priest or saint, minister, truth teacher, or so-called healer can be an intermediary between you and God. Christ in you is your hope of glory. You must examine yourself to see if you are holding to this faith. Test yourself. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? If you do, put him to the test. He is your power to create, your power to imagine everything – be it good, bad, or indifferent.

The 14th chapter of the Book of John begins: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” This statement is repeated in different ways over and over again by the master of souls – who is Christ in you, for when he awakens fear is abolished. Awake, he urges you to fear not, be not afraid, be not troubled. A tyrant could not exist without fear. He must scare us to death before he can rule us. By slaughtering millions (and you are afraid you will be next) he has you under his power. But if you know you and your family cannot die, you will not be afraid and there would be no tyrant. Tyranny can exist only in a frightened world. So, Awakened Imagination begins the 14th [chapter] of John by saying: “Let not your heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am there you may be also. Now the place you know and the way you know.” Then Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ and he replied, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.’ Then Philip said, ‘Show us the Father and we will be satisfied.’ And he answered, ‘I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ ”

Let us take this verse on this level first and then take it into the higher level. In my Father’s house are many mansions. The word translated “mansion” means to stay in a certain place; state; relation; or expectancy.” There are infinite states from which you may view the world. You may enter a state and abide there until it becomes your home or you could be simply passing through for a moment, but it is a state, one of your Father’s mansions. Choose the mansion in your Father’s house that you would like to enter. Assume you are already there. Feel the reality of the state surround you and you have arrived. Your dream is now true, but you must abide there!

When you leave this auditorium tonight you expect to return to the place you left to come here. At the moment this auditorium is solid and real, while your home is only a mental image. So what is a home? It is the state to which your thoughts most constantly return. Are you thinking from the state you desire? Or is your dream just a passing fancy, a daydream you enjoyed for the moment and then dropped? You can tell if you abide in your house of desire by watching your thoughts, for the state in which you most constantly return constitutes your dwelling place.

When you imagined you were the person you wanted to be and heard your friends rejoice at your good fortune, you entered that state and prepared a place in which to dwell; for at that moment Christ in you was speaking to the outer, rational you. As your own wonderful human imagination Christ is telling you that he knows you are afraid, that you have obligations in life which must be met, but to not be afraid for “I will go and prepare a place for you.” Knowing this, close your physical eyes upon the world round about you and let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid, for all things are possible to Christ in you! Let him prepare the state, for he is the way to its fulfillment.

Closing your eyes against the facts of life, dare to assume you are seeing and hearing what you would see and hear if your desire were true. Now, tune it in as you would a radio. If, when you turned on the radio four or five stations are heard at the same time, you couldn’t stand the confusion and would turn the radio off. So it is with your imagination – it must be fine-tuned. Now no radio or TV is comparable to you, for that which the mind creates cannot be greater than the mind who created it. We are amazed at the perfection of a little instrument called a radio because it can produce sound out of the nowhere, yet the mind that is so amazed is the one who created it. Our radio or television can be carried around the house or yard with no connection to a charge of electricity, yet the sound and picture come through perfect, and any station (or channel) can be reached by merely a flick of the wrist. At this moment everything that is being broadcast or telecast in the world is in this room, but we haven’t tuned it in.

Now, you have an instrument infinitely greater than any radio or television, but it must be turned on and fine tuned. Think of a friend who would truly rejoice in your good fortune. Tune him in until his is the only voice you can hear. Let him tell you of his thrill because of your good fortune. Listen carefully until his voice is crystal clear and you can hear the sentence you put upon that voice. Now, believe in its reality. If you will, you are living by this principle and not merely accepting the Christian faith as a substitute for living by it.

Can you imagine the turmoil which is going on in the Catholic world tonight now that the courts have cut off forty of their so-called saints? Half of my family is Catholic. I do hope that my Protestant brothers, who did not marry Catholic girls, will be big enough to mention it. I recall about twenty years ago my wife and I visited a Catholic family. At the time my wife said to me: “They are ardent Catholics, but don’t know a thing about you except that you are a Protestant and not saved.” After a lovely dinner we sat around the pool and watched their three sons swim. Each boy wore a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck. One was three years into the priesthood when he quit, joined the army, and returned minus his hearing. Another returned without a foot and the third minus an arm. They told me that they believed that without this medal they would have died. Well, I wonder what will happen to that family when they learn St. Christopher never existed! The only Christ who ever existed is within you as your own wonderful human imagination. There never was another.

When one being awoke to discover all that was foretold in scripture was taking place in him, he knew who the Messiah really was. He told his story, while some believed and some did not believe him. Those who heard and believed him wrote his experiences in the form of a story, because truth is far more acceptable when told in story form, as in our four gospels. But one day we will be big enough to hear it without the story form to support us.

Redemption was foretold in the Old Testament, but not understood by those who recorded it. The prophets who prophesied the coming of the Messiah searched and inquired concerning this grace that was to be ours, and it was revealed to them that it was not for them to know. The time had not yet come, for it was for us. Now that the horrors have been fulfilled, the Messiah who was buried in us before that the world was is beginning to erupt in the individual. Everything said of Jesus Christ will be realized in you individually, for the Bible was written about you.

Now, before the Messiah comes, you can put his word to the test. If Christ is your own wonderful human imagination and all things – be they good, bad, or indifferent – are made by him, you can imagine unlovely things and perpetuate their image. To say that Christ makes only the good and a devil makes the evil is false, for the devil is just as phony as Christopher. When you doubt the power of Christ in you – that’s the devil. Unless you actually believe that “I am” is the being you are seeking and pray only to him by exercising your human imagination, you will never reach your desire, for awareness is the only power that can give it to you.

Tonight, ask yourself what you would be aware of hearing, seeing and experiencing if your desire were now fulfilled. If what I tell you is true and your imagination is the creator of all things, then you should be able to prove his power in the testing. I tell you: there is no intermediary between yourself and God. If you will but test this power within you, it will prove itself in performance. Then you will know who Christ really is.

Now, no one comes unto the Father except by me and I am going to tell you exactly how to come to the Father. It is not spelled out in scripture. I searched, but could not find him until he revealed himself to me. One day he will reveal himself in you, for you will see a lad, chosen by God to be his son. The lad will be ruddy in complexion, very handsome, with beautiful eyes. He will be in his early teens. As you look into his eyes you know exactly who he is and who you are. Then and only then do you know you are God the Father. So, no one comes to the awareness of being God the Father except by the revelation of David, for he is the one through whom you come to the awareness of Fatherhood.

In this same 14th chapter of John, Awakened Imagination asks this question: “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father, how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father?” David is one with his father. He is united to the Lord, having become one spirit with him. So, the only way you can ever find the Father within you is to bring forth his son, David. We are told in the 89th Psalm: “I have found David. He has cried unto me ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’”

The word “found” recorded here, if taken on the surface implies David was lost; but the word means, “to bring forth one who is behind you.” David, eternal youth, was put into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end when he brings forth that which was behind all along, waiting to come out. You will never know you are God the Father until David appears and calls you Father. It is he who stated in the 2nd Psalm: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord, he said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’” In my own case I felt an explosion in my skull, and when everything settled I saw my son leaning against the side of an open door, looking out on a pastoral scene. As he turned and looked at me standing at his right, I knew I was his father, fulfilling scripture.

The gospel is the truest story ever told but men, because of their traditions, have voided the world of God and built a stupid concept called “saints.” What man on earth could be a saint? The only saints are the redeemed, those who form the body of the Risen Lord. May I tell you: everyone is predestined for that redemption. Not one will be lost, so why pick someone out and call him a saint only to later deny he was ever a Christian? They even took Saint Nicolas off their list, claiming he never existed! Here are mortal men, without vision, appointing themselves judges of saints!

I tell you: regardless of what you do here as a mortal man you are redeemed, for redemption hasn’t a thing to do with the man’s ethical code. It’s entirely up to the being within a man who – having played all the parts – awakens to receive the crown of righteousness which has been waiting for your return. The moment he awakens you are redeemed. But your friends know you as mortal and have not the slightest concept of what this power is. Browning said in his “Reverie”:

“From the first, Power was – I knew
That, strive but for a closer view,
Love were as plain to see.

This is true for: prior to power, was love. In my own case striving for love did not reveal it to me. Only when God in me unveiled himself as love was it plain to see.

As love, you will exercise your almighty power in the world to come. To have that power here, before you were incorporated into the body of love, would cause havoc in the world; for the God of whom I speak is infinite love and almighty power, and that God you are, but you will not know it until your journey is complete. Only when he completes the journey will he unveil himself to you – his emanation – by embracing you into his own being. At that moment you will cease to be another, for you will become one with the Living God. Then you will tell your story to all who will listen. Some will believe you and others will disbelieve, but you will tell it until you take off your mortal garment for the last time to become one with the Risen Lord who is made up of all the redeemed of humanity. And in the end, when all are redeemed, this being who was before that the world was will be more powerful, more wise, and more glorious, because of his journey into the world of death.

Tonight learn to fine-tune your imagination. Knowing the voice of your friend, tune him in. Determine the words you want him to say and listen carefully. Tune him in until his words are fine and clear, then believe you heard him. Think it really happened. If you will, it will come to pass. When, I cannot say, for every imaginal act is like an egg and no two eggs (unless they are of the same species) have the same interval of time for hatching. The little bird comes out in three weeks, a sheep in five months, a horse in twelve months, and a human in nine months. Your imaginal act has its own appointed hour to ripen and flower. If it seems long, wait – for it is sure and will not be late for itself.

An imaginal act is a creative act, for the moment it is felt, the seed (or state) is fertilized. It will take a certain length of time to be born, so start today by assuming you are the man (or woman) you would like to be and let the people in your mind’s eye reflect the truth of your assumption. Be faithful to your assumption. Persist in this thought, for persistence is the way to bring your desire to pass. You don’t persist through effort or fear, rather knowing that your imaginal act is now a fact; wait for its birth, for it will come.

Now, a friend wrote, saying that in her dream she was walking down the street holding a fish in her hands. The fish appeared to be dead, yet she could feel it pulse. Determine to keep the fish alive, she found a cup, filled it with water, and placed the fish inside. Then she awoke, hearing a male voice say: “Oh my darling.”

Every dream contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. A fish is the symbol of the power of the human imagination. Imagine yourself depressed, and imagination will throw you into the pit of depression. Imagine yourself free, and your imaginative power will bring you out, for your imagination is the savior of your world. When you become lost in the reasoning world, your imagination is not fed with your desire, for reason negates its flow. Christ, being your human imagination, is not limited by the reasoning world and all things are possible to him. If you would ignore the facts and walk in your imaginal acts as though your wish were already fulfilled you are feeding Christ, and he becomes alive within you once more. Her dream, created by her own being who is Christ in her, was telling her she is neglecting herself. Knowing what to do is not enough. Knowledge must be acted upon. It is so easy to accept the Christian faith and use it only as a substitute for action, and so difficult to live by it; but only as you live by your imagination can you ever know who you really are.

I had a similar experience as this lady’s, but mine was in another form of the symbol of Christ, which is the pig. One night I found myself in a nursery filled with everything that grows. As I started to leave I looked down to find a little runt of a pig at my feet. Picking him up, I placed him on a table, broke off some branches of a nearby tree to cushion him, and began to search for food to feed him. Then, as happens in dreams, the scene shifted. I am now in a vegetable market with the pig at my side. He has grown in stature but is very thin. Suddenly I realized that he was mine, so I turned to my little daughter Vicki and said: “Go get me some food that I may feed my pig.” She replied: “Daddy, I don’t have any money.” Then I said: “You don’t need money here, for all of this belongs to us.” Going over to a stand of crackers, piled in the form of a pyramid, Vicki took a box from the base, causing the entire pyramid to come tumbling down.

Opening the box, I began to feed my pig when my brother Victor came by and, taking what appeared to be white, creamy grease, he spread it on my crackers saying: “This will give it sustenance.” Suddenly a lit candle appeared within the mixture and I said: “The candle is lit and it must never go out again.” Then these words from scripture came to me: “His candle is lit upon my forehead and by this light I walk through darkness, for the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.”

Prior to this vision I had discovered that my imagination was the only God who ever existed, yet in spite of this discovery I had not fed it. Rather I continued to use the rational approach to life by planning my life on a reasonable basis. Knowing of a power that did not need reason was not enough; I had to exercise this power within me. And then I was determined to exercise my imagination on behalf of myself and others. I saw my candle was lit and knew that from then on I would not let its light go out or get dim for lack of use.

Paul said: “I am a steward of the mystery.” The word “steward” means “the keeper of the pig.” We are told to follow the example of the dishonest steward and falsify our records. To be a steward of the mysteries, however, the pig must be fed so that you know what you are talking about. You must exercise your powerful imagination morning, noon, and night and never neglect it.

If tonight you gave a man a million dollars to invest well, he will neglect to feed his pig because to him he has it all. Then one night he will see his pig and realize what he has done to the power within him. If you are a musician and stop practicing for a week you will not be qualified to give a concert. Only when you practice daily are you qualified. And so it is with your imagination. It must be exercised daily and then one day you will discover the Christ within you, who is God the Father, who comes only through his son David calling you Father.

Now let us go into the silence.

CHRIST IS YOUR LIFE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-18-1968

This teaching is essentially a revelation of the Risen Christ. I am not speaking of the life of any man between his physical birth and death, but of the Christ who has risen in me and who rises in all. I have no mental image of a being outside of my life, or yours.

Paul tells us: “You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, you will appear with him in glory.” (Col. 3:3,4) Here we see Paul equating your life with Christ. You are alive now, so what does Paul mean when he claims you have died? All of Paul’s letters equate death with a sleep so profound the past is forgotten. It is from the sleep of death he urges you to roust yourself from saying: “Awake O sleeper and rise from the dead.”

The one and only Christ is your life. Now asleep in humanity, this power believes itself to be you. And when it awakens and rises in you, it is you who rise as Christ. God’s power and wisdom is sleeping in you as your own life. God is love! When God died he gave you, his sons, your inheritance. It was not a home or some fabulous land, but the power of his love! The power to create every desire of your heart.

Let me start with a point, which has confused some. A gentleman wrote: “You say others have bodies and lives of their own, but their reality is rooted in you as your reality is rooted in God. I have a desire that involves others, yet I have the feeling that they do not want to be a part of it. Although you say I should not concern myself with influencing others, as the world – rooted in me – will play the part they must play if I am faithful to my objectives; but what right have I to influence others?

“Believing that imagining creates reality and that there is no fiction, I start with a premise that has not one thing in the outer world to support it; but in the midst of my project I turn aside, for I cannot influence these men. I now wonder if perhaps this is also their hidden desire and they do not want me in it. You say when I am lovingly exercising my imagination on behalf of another, I am mediating God to that other. I know that what I imagine will benefit all; yet because of my doubt as to their desire to be involved, should I continue to do it?”

I would say to him, just take the objective. Perhaps because of their talents you have singled them out as partners, but if they moved away would you still have the desire? If so, then they are not essential. If you put yourself in the end by rejoicing in the objective’s fulfillment, those who are equally talented – and maybe more so – will come seeking you; for remaining in the end, you will draw the necessary individuals to play the part they must play to aid the birth of what you are doing.

Now, you questioned if all things worked for good. The 8th chapter of Romans tells us that it does. This truth is dramatized for us in the 50th chapter of the Book of Genesis. It is the story of Joseph, one of the twelve Sons of Jacob. Joseph had the capacity to dream vividly. His visions were true and he could interpret them. His brothers, becoming envious, plotted to kill him; but Judah interceded, urging them to sell him instead.

Joseph was sold as a slave, and when no one could interpret Pharaoh’s dreams Joseph was brought before him. He interpreted the dreams so accurately, Pharaoh made him equal with himself, and whatever Joseph said was instantly executed. He foretold of the famine that was to come; and when his brothers came seeking food Joseph – now sitting on the throne – recognized them, and said: “Fear not, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” So everything works for good when there is time to reflect upon the act.

I could go back to my own small family. There came a moment in our life when it seemed as though the world had come to its end. My father’s partners, desiring to take control of the little equity he had in the business, succeeded and our world collapsed. We had nothing and even our friends made themselves scarce.

But what appeared to be an evil thing turned out to be a blessing, for by detaching ourselves from this partnership – which was small in the sense that they couldn’t think big – my father started on his own with sons who could imagine. The family has now turned our business into a large enterprise of many kinds of businesses with no outside partnerships, dwarfing anything we thought possible forty years ago when it happened. It has taken time and reflection, but now we can see that – although my father’s partners intended evil against him – God meant it for good.

Now, a friend had a dream in which he received a letter with his son’s report card inside, indicating that he must show a decided improvement in four subjects, one of which was algebra. Since his son has always been tops in math, he was annoyed and instantly revised the report card. Suddenly angry with himself he said: “I am tired of the responsibility of this power and life’s many needs of revision. My son is a big boy now, let him do it for himself,” and awoke.

Peter asked the question: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him, seven times?” and the Lord answered: “I did not say seven, but seventy times seven.” This does not mean four hundred and ninety times. Seventy is the numerical value of the Hebrew letter ayin, whose symbol is an eye. Seven is the numerical value of the Hebrew letter zayin, whose symbol is a sword.

Here we are being told to imagine until the eye is fixed as though nailed with a sword. It may happen the first time or it may take a thousand times to persuade yourself that things are as you desire them to be, and not as they appear to be. But, to the degree that you are self-persuaded that you have done it in your imagination, will the outer world reflect its harmony.

William James, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is one of our great educators. He said: “The greatest revelation in my generation is the discovery that human beings, by a change of inner attitude can produce outer changes in harmony with their inner convictions.”

That’s in the Bible. In the Book of Genesis we are shown in story form how inner attitudes produce outer states. Knowing the time when the animals would be ready for the act of creation and the watering hole to which they would come, Jacob made a bargain with his father-in-law that – although all of the animals were either black or brown, should any offspring be striped or spotted they would be his.

Believing man becomes what he beholds, and that the same would apply to the animal world, Jacob stripped the poplar trees so that only stripes appeared. Then he brought only the healthy animals to the watering hole, leaving all of the weak ones to breed – the brown with the brown and the black with the black. When the females came to the watering holes and were sired, they saw only stripes and producing what they beheld, their offsprings were striped.

So this lesson was given us in the beginning. Whatever you are beholding in your mind’s eye, you will produce in your outer world. It is just as simple as that. I hope you are beholding your fulfilled desire in your mind’s eye; for scripture tells you that: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” This is telling you that, to the degree you are self-persuaded, you will become what you have assumed you are.

In the case of my friend, his dream was telling him to continue to revise and not to be afraid of the responsibility of his tremendous power to imagine; for life itself is nothing more than an activity of imagination. When I speak of Christ being your life, I am saying he is your imagination, for life is an activity of imagination. Ask yourself what you are imagining right now and you will discover what Christ has created. For by him all things are created, and without him is not a thing created that is created.

Everything now formed and called a fact was once only an image in the mind of someone who persisted in that image and projected it onto the screen of space. So do not give up the responsibility of revision, and – as to influencing others – may I say you cannot help it. As you walk the street you unwittingly influence people there. You simply cannot stop it.

Another point I want to bring up is this: The prophets who wrote the Old Testament were servants of the Lord. They recorded what they saw or heard, but they did not understand it. Every true prophet’s vision is foreshortened. Seeing as present what is future: “The prophets prophesied of the grace that was to be yours. They searched and inquired as to what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving, not themselves but you, in the things that are now being revealed.”

Some of you are having wonderful visions and attempting to interpret them in this world. I urge you not to, as you will go astray when you try to determine an individual’s departure – for no one knows the hour, day, or season. Only the Father knows and it remains his secret. It does not make any difference how perfect the vision, it was foreshortened. You saw it as taking place now. It may happen today or tomorrow, but you cannot foresee it. You saw the vision. Being a true prophet, record your visions in detail but do not attempt to interpret them.

That brings me to another point which has puzzled my friend. When I speak of God, or Lord, Jesus, or Christ, I am speaking of the human imagination. When asked to name the greatest of all commandments, he did not name one of the ten, but Israel’s confession of faith saying: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word “Lord” is JOD HE VAV HE [pron. “YOD HEY VAV HEY”] meaning “I am”. The word “God” is “Elohim” [pron. “e-lo-HEEM”] which is a compound unity of one made up of many. In the 44th chapter of Ezekiel the Lord God said: “They shall have no inheritance; I AM their inheritance. Give them no possession; I AM their possession.” Study this passage carefully and you will discover that instead of God inheriting us, we inherit God.

Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friend. Not pretending, but voluntarily abandoning self for those he loved, God died that we may inherit him. What is He that we inherit?

He has told us “I AM the light of the world.” One day you will inherit the experience of being the light of the universe. There will be no stars, no sun, no moon, no circumference – only infinite, pulsing, living light, which you know yourself to be. You will inherit God as infinite love. Whatever God was before he became individualized, you will experience as yourself.

God was a father before he became you and when he possesses you, you are the identical father. The 2nd Psalm reveals the son that was his before he became you. But no one knows who that son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except that son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

One day that son will choose to reveal you and you will see – not a David, but the David of Biblical fame. And there will be no uncertainty as to the relationship between you and God’s son, David. When he calls you father, you will know that you are God.

When you inherit God, you inherit his infinite past, and from that moment on you will see scripture differently. You will recognize the events in the life of Jesus as signs of the initiative of God in man’s redemption. You will understand how God gives himself to man.

John records eight signs of the initiative of God in Man’s redemption. Many scholars have put the first and the last together, the second and the seventh, the third and the sixth and the fourth with the fifth, making four major signs. When these signs begin to unfold in you, count the days and you will discover there are 1260 days between the first vision and the last, as you inherit God.

You are not some little thing that God animates, gives life to, and owns. God gave himself to you in the ultimate sense of the word, so you shall have no inheritance, for I AM your inheritance. You shall have no possession in Israel, for I AM your possession. If you possess God, whatever He is, you must be!

I have just quoted the 44th chapter of Ezekiel. Read it carefully. Become aware of possessing God, and you will no longer be the little pygmy you were taught that you are. Don’t react to the nonsense you read in the papers. They record the happenings of the surface mind. What happens to a man between the cradle and the grave should not interest you. Whether he is a cook or a millionaire, the best-dressed man (or woman) of the year, or the most highly publicized – that’s all relevant to this would and hasn’t a thing to do with the Christ in you, who – as your life – will awaken one day and rise.

When Christ awoke in me I was so amazed, as I did not realize I had been asleep. Every morning I had awakened to a new day and retired that night, just as you have done throughout the ages. From the cradle to the grave you have fallen asleep at night and awakened in the morning. In time you have died, only to be restored to life to continue the same long journey. But one day you will awaken in the tomb where awareness was placed in the beginning. To your amazement you won’t even remember falling asleep, and never for one second thought your skull was the tomb where they placed Jesus Christ.

But upon waking your inheritance will unfold, as everything said of Jesus Christ will be experienced by you in a first person, singular, present tense experience. You will discover you are the central actor in the divine drama of descent and ascent, for no one can ascend but he who descended.

Only Christ descended, so when you ascend you must be Christ. This is the hope that makes it wisdom to endure the suffering of this long dark night of time. Dwell upon that hope which is the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ in you, as you! There never was another and there never will be another, for Christ is your life!

Read the 3rd chapter, the 3rd and 4th verses of Colossians carefully. You have died and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, you also shall appear with him in glory, because you are Christ! His appearance is his rising and awakening in you. His birth becomes your birth. The discovery of the fatherhood of God reveals you as the father, and the 44th chapter of Ezekiel is fulfilled. I AM your inheritance! I AM your possession!

Remember: everything you see, although it appears on the outside it is within you. You do not have to be concerned about influencing individuals if you make goals. If you want a great deal of money, see the money within you. Then claim it is yours!

Today a very rich man is getting a great deal of publicity because of his marriage. Born a poor boy in Turkey of Greek parents, he was taken to Argentina when he was sixteen, where he began to import tobacco, starting his business with sixty dollars. He has completely forgotten those days, and the one he would marry – because of ambition for greatness in name – would have you forget his lowly beginnings. Shakespeare had a word for it: “He denies the ladder by which he did ascend.” Starting with sixty dollars, this man began to dream and today he is a billionaire. I would not ask him how he stole it. So far he has gotten away with it and it is considered his, but anyone with a billion dollars must have stolen it. It doesn’t matter however, as all things work for good in the end.

It should not matter what a man does with his life between the cradle and the grave. The important thing is what is happening within the man. Has the life that animates that body been stirred? Is it beginning to rise in him? It must rise in order to inherit God, for only Christ inherits God. Christ is your life which must rise in you, and when he does you inherit God the Father.

Whether you play the part of a cook or a king, a carpenter or movie idol, is not important – for your external state means nothing. There are men who are now playing the part of a cook, carpenter, shoeshine boy, or barber, knowing they are redeemed, waiting patiently for that moment in time when they can take off the garment of flesh and blood for the last time. But only the Father knows that moment. Let no one speculate as to when it will happen. Record your visions, but do not interpret them. We are all past masters at misinterpretation of the great mission of God to us.

As for me, I have already risen. I am of the world, not in it. My dreams and experiences at night are not related to this world, so I play a double life. While I am here there is work to be done to continue to encourage everyone by telling the true story of redemption.

Take this wonderful story to heart. It is a true one. Christ is your life which is wholly supernatural. The birth is supernatural. The discovery of the Father is supernatural. The tearing of the temple from top to bottom and the ascent into the kingdom are supernatural, as well as the descent of the dove. No physical dove descends upon your shoulder – it is a supernatural experience, but this fantastic truth has been embodied in a tale that man could understand; for, as Tennyson said: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”

Remember what I have said. Forget influence! Take objectives. Conceive a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your desire and dream noble dreams, for nothing is impossible to Christ and Christ is your life!

Now let us go into the silence.

CHRIST UNVEILED

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 3-15-1963

Tonight’s subject is “Christ Unveiled.” That is quite a tall order, for we are told in Mark 13:21: “If anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.” And I will endorse that one hundred percent. Listen to it carefully and see the pronoun used in that sentence. “Here he is, believe him not.” So, here, who is Christ? What is Christ? Where is Christ? Paul found him and, having found him, he said: “From now on we regard no one from a human point of view even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” (1 Cor. 5:16) He regards him not, from now on, as man. He thought he was man and went out to destroy those who believed in Christ as a man.

Then we are told in I Peter 1:10,11: “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.” They thought they were looking for a person, or time, and they wondered whether he would come. There was no reply to that, save “It was revealed to them they were serving not themselves but you” (v. 12) What is Christ? I tell you Christ is “The Way” of salvation. Christ is “The Way” to the Father.

Now we will turn back to the Gospels where we have these events together, for Scripture, as we understand it, says the New Testament is based on the affirmation that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. Did they happen? I tell you from experience, they happened. Not only they happened, but are happening. They are taking place every moment of time in our world. If you have not experienced these events may I tell you: you are going to. Not a thing in this world that you will ever do will stop it. God will not fail – not in one being in this world. Here we are told the events were assembled and Luke, in his first four verses, makes the statement: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” So, here we have the oral tradition. They all talked about it. These things happened and they are telling it, but come the moment in time that many undertook to put it into written form and he thought it wise to do the same thing. And so he said: “Having observed all things closely for sometime past.” He thought he, too, would put it in written form for one he called Theophilus – meaning “one who loves God.” He is speaking to you. You love God, I love God. He is the source of everything – the source of our life and the end of all things. And, so, he is addressing his remarks to you – O dear Theophilus – that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.

And so, we heard it orally. I did as a child, but when I began to read and write I could read it for myself, but did not understand it. Before I could read it, mother taught it to me and I was sent to school and it was taught to me in school. Then I was sent to Sunday school and I heard the story told by the teacher. And, so, we heard it orally. Then came the moment in time we could read it for ourselves. Then came this closed book.

Now, let us see if we can unveil Christ tonight. In Matthew 16:13, one called Christ Jesus turns to his disciples and asked this question: “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Then he said to them: “But who do you say that I am?” Right away that second question identifies it with the son of man. The first question is: “But who do you say that I am?” So he is asking the question about the Son of Man. Then he is asking about himself. “But who do you say that I am?” He identifies himself with the Son of Man. And Peter replied: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And to this he answered: “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” He confesses that no flesh and blood could have told it, it has to come by revelation. Where do we find this flesh and blood revelation? In Galatians 1:16, 17. “When it pleased God to reveal His son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” That, mortal mind could not reveal, no matter how it rationalized or tried to unravel this mystery. It cannot, it has to be revealed – it has to be completely unfolded, in the individual. So, he said: “I am the Son of man.”

Now, we go back in the Old Testament to find this cue. Where did God promise this? We turn to 2 Samuel, 7th Chapter. This is a vision. We are told between the 8th and 17th verses, that Nathan received a vision, and “according to all these words and according to all this vision, Nathan spoke to David. This is what he told David: “And the Lord said unto me – the Lord of Hosts O go to my servant David and say to David, ‘When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will be his father, and he shall be my son.’ Here, we have to now spiritualize the vision of David. Here is David, a man. If “I will raise up your son after you,” then he is David’s son. I cannot deny it. “I will raise up your son after you who will come forth from your body.” “I will (now the Lord is speaking) be his father and he shall be my son.” If he is the son of David then he is the Son of man. If, on the other hand, the Lord adopts him, “He shall be my son,” then he is the Son of God. So, in this case, who do men say the Son of man is? And they all thought of all kinds of things. He said then: “Who do you say I am?” “You are Christ, the Son of God.” Now right away you think in terms “You are Christ, the Son of God” and yet – the Son of man, you think of a man. And it is not so at all.

Here is a man as you are – male or female – walking the earth. You have heard the story orally, but when you began to read you could read it for yourself, but you did not understand it. You are playing your normal part in this world and one day when you least expect it – in fact, you never expect it – you thought it happened 2,000 years ago to one person and that was it – well, you are that person. It is happening to you. You go through the entire series of events as recorded in Scripture, and then you know [who] Christ is. Christ is “The Way” to the Father – and there is no other Way. “I am the Way.” To what? To everything in this world! But especially to the Father. “I am the Way. No one comes unto the Father but by me,” as told in the 14th [chapter] of John. But no one comes unto the Father but by me.” So, here is the Way. What is the Way? Then you search the Scripture and find the Way, and the Way you do not determine – it was in the beginning. Listen to the statement carefully, in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians (1:15-17): “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities – all things were created through him for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

“He is the image of the invisible God – the first born of all creation.” Now where is this said in the Old Testament? Because the New is only the fulfillment. The whole is in the Old and the New is fulfillment. You will find it in Proverbs 8:22, 23: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth . . . when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a little child.” (v. 29) Here is God’s way of salvation. But God’s way in Scripture is always personified. Every attribute of man’s mind, which is God’s mind, is always personified. If it is wealth, you see wealth as a man. If it is power, you see power as a man. When you meet Infinite Might – it is a man. All the attributes of mind are always personified, for God is man and man is God. So He personifies this Way – the Way that was in the beginning. This is not improvised. Before God brought the whole vast world into being, he plotted and planned a way of redemption for all of us. This is not an afterthought of God. It came first. “I am the first of his acts of old,” before he brought forth the world – the universe, anything – he planned a Way, and the Way was to God, personified as a little child. “And I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of man.” (Proverbs 8:30, 31)

Now listen carefully: “He who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Prov. 8:35, 36) Where is it in the New Testament – the second part of what we just quoted? The very first words uttered by Jesus recorded in Scripture you will find in the last few verses in Luke 2. It takes place in the synagogue – the temple – and his parents said to him: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” And he replied: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them.” But, the mother kept these things in her heart, and then Jesus grew in years, in wisdom, and in the favor of the Lord. The first recorded utterance of Jesus in Scripture when he was only a lad, a child: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He said heaven is the throne of God and heaven is within you. Where would you find him? You are asking me? Where would you seek me? They sought him elsewhere, but they could not find him until they found him in the father’s house – for you are the temple of the living God. It is called synagogue, outwardly. You are the synagogue, but you are the temple of the living God. I will not find the way until I find him myself. And find him without searching for him. One day when it pleases God – for it comes with the fullness of time and he sees in me the ripeness he is looking for – then he unfolds me by this series of events, in his home.

First the birth, then the discovery of his son, and then the splitting of the temple. And I am taken into his home – and his home is within. Just as described in the 13th Chapter of Mark, there is the most frightening earthquake when you are taken into his home, and you are the cause of it. When you move up and move into that heavenly state within you, there is a vibration you have never experienced before. The whole vast world within you begins to shake because you have been redeemed. You are brought in and there is joy beyond the wildest dream you could ever conceive, because one more has been brought into the temple, into the house of God.

It is true as I have told you. So Christ is the Way, the Way of redemption, and the Way is man. “The Lord created me at the beginning of His Way, the first of his acts of old.” Before he brought forth the stars or anything, he created a way of return to himself, and that way is called Christ in the Bible. And the people sought him and the prophets inquired as to what person, and to this day, in 1963, they are still looking for a person. You will see it in the papers – they are always looking for some person coming into the world that will be Christ and they are so eager to find a Christ on the outside. They thought they found one in Hitler, or in Stalin, or someone else – always a savior of the world. But, as quoted earlier from Mark 13:21: “And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.” You will never find him in another. In no being in this world will you find him. You either find him in yourself as the Way that leads you to God, or you will not find him. But you will find him – everyone will find him. And when they find him, they find him as a “Way.” He said: “I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Life; I am the Resurrection; I am the Door.” There is no other door. You cannot get through it in any other way, and this is the Way of the Father. The Way is inwoven in every child in this world and that child will find the way when God is ready for him, for only God knows that moment in eternity when he will awaken that child.

Now, why are we called in 2 Samuel 7: “Those who sleep with the Fathers?” Here we are three billion in the world today, and “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.” And you think those were the fathers. May I tell you: you are the fathers. You have already fulfilled your day in preparation, and now you are sleeping with the fathers. You are sound asleep, but you don’t know it. You came here tonight as a conscious being and you will go home tonight – drive your cars or get off the bus at the right points, you will go to bed fully conscious of the fact that this is when you are going to sleep and that prior to that you were awake. You did all these things conscious.

I have observed my brother Bruce; from the time he was born he was a sleep walker. Bruce would come down stairs and go to the larder, unlock the larder for some milk and bread and jam. He would walk around naturally. We would do everything to make him fall on his neck, but he never did. He walked around the chairs or anything else in the room and then came back upstairs and went back to bed, totally unaware he had done anything unnatural, and the only person in the world who could convince him he did it was my mother. He would oppose us, but not mother. Not that she would have done anything violent, but he could not mistrust my mother. She was to us the ideal. She would not lie to us. So our brother Bruce trusted her, but he would rack his brain to find out why he did it. We put obstacles in his way but he would walk around them.

That taught me a lesson in my mature years when I was awakened to find that I had been asleep all through the ages and I did not know it. All through the ages I have been sleeping – and how long are these ages? Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians, “The mystery hidden for ages and generations . . . which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:26, 27) He tells us a mystery – the mystery – the mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory. I did not understand it anymore than the world understands it, and one day it happened. And God, in his infinite mercy, looked upon me and found me ripe, and he woke me. I awoke for the first time in eternity, and I was sealed in a tomb, and the tomb was my skull. And God rolled away the stone and I came out. But until that moment I never thought for one moment I was asleep. Not only asleep, but the sleep was so deep, so profound, I was dead. For when I awoke I was in a tomb, and you do not put anyone in a tomb unless they are dead. So when you enter that tomb you are dead, and you are one with Christ, who died for you. He is the Way. Together you are completely sealed in a tomb. But you don’t know it. I did not know it. But I have never been more awake in eternity. When I saw things around about me and saw them all objectively, and they could not see me, I understood the words: “He is the image of the Invisible God.” How could you be the image of something invisible? But those are the words: “The image of the invisible God” – the first of all that was created. How could I actually reflect something invisible? It was true, you are the image of the invisible God and nothing that is mortal that looks at you can see you. You are more real than anything in the world. And the whole thing began to come back and I began to see the experiences I have come through and I wondered, for it puzzled me. Looking at you – looking at myself, bathing, shaving, taking care of the body, and it seemed so alive and so independent of any man’s perception of it. I could leave the room when I wanted to and do the things I wanted to do but at this moment in time I realized this is not so at all.

When I awoke, I then realized an experience I had many years before. God was bringing me to that point of awakening. In one moment in time he took me into a world just like this and showed me a power that would be myself tomorrow. He allowed me to exercise it just for a moment and I saw people just like you. As I saw them, I arrested within myself a rhythm – an action. As I did it, the people I observed stood still – everything stood still. I wondered how it could be, but they could not move. But when I released the activity within me that I arrested, they all moved on and completed their intention. Then it broke. Then I understood what he meant: “As the Father has life within himself, so he has granted to the son to have life in himself.”

So everyone is destined to have life within himself. Then you wonder about these garments and all these things round about us – this thing called Neville. What are all these things? Are these really costumes? Is something being formed in us that is the image of the Invisible God and we have to play these parts and wear these costumes for the moment? I have concluded that it is true – that, as Shakespeare says, the whole vast world is really a stage and all men are merely the players. And one man plays many parts in his time, and the being playing it all is God – individualizing himself and begetting himself, as told in 2 Samuel 7: “I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son.” Out of this human body something is coming forward that is going to be called the Son of man, because it comes out of man. But it will be the Son of God, and it is the image of the Invisible God – something born in man and he brings him forward. And may I tell you: it is your own sense of I-ness. No loss of identity when you are awakened. None whatsoever. You will know me in eternity and I will know you.

But for all the sameness of identity, we will know each other. But there is going to be a radical discontinuity of form – a radical discontinuity. You have no idea how beautiful you really are. Human face, yes. Human hands, yes. Human feet, yes. The human body – no. Not this body, not for one moment, but I cannot describe it to you. Not that I wouldn’t, if I could, but I can’t. If I made an attempt, it could only be radiant light, like a rainbow. Yet I would know you and you will know me, for there is a sameness of identity and human enough we can recognize each other. But the form – a radical discontinuity. You can display it and you know who you are, then you return to this – this garment, that you will one day put down forever, and this is essential.

Before this came into being, God mapped out a way, and The Way was called Christ. No one understood who Christ was. They thought it was a man who would come and save the world. (People are always looking for a man that will come and save the world.) That man is you. You are David. He brings forward your son, but that is his son. Then you will understand the great opening statement of Matthew: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then he brings up the question, “What think ye of the Christ; whose son is he?” The question is not complete until you listen to the past part – “son of David.” “Then why did David, in Spirit, call him father?” And you will see the Son of man is also the Son of God. But the Son of God and God are one. “I and my Father are one.” You get it? I and my Father are one, and yet I am the Son of man.

This is man, and out of man comes a being that is God’s son. And then David – who played this fantastic part, which is now universal humanity – becomes the Son of man. You follow it? The Son of man is one with the Son of God. But that out of which the Son of man comes (who is the Son of God) in turn becomes the Son of man. You follow it? Son of man – Son of God – God. The Son of God and God are one, if the Son of God cannot deny the product of man.

The question is asked in the 16th [chapter] of Matthew: “Who do men say the Son of man is?” Naturally, because He is the Son of man they have to think in terms of man, and they say: “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” So they mention man. He does not quarrel with that. He changes it, now: “But who do you say that I am?” He is asking: “Who is I?” He tells you: “I am the son of man – but who am I?” They mention “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then he tells them; “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in Heaven.” Then he comes down to the foundation – who is the Son of man? The Son of God? God? It comes out David. That is the promise given to us.

David is collective humanity, and out of David comes the Son of man and that Son of Man is the Son of God. When the Son of God awakes, he has to have a son, and it is David. Jesus never got beyond that age of 12 where he appears in the temple, and they ask: “Where were you? We have been looking all over for you. Why did you do this unto us? And He says: “Why did you seek me? You found me in my Father’s house. Why did you seek me elsewhere. You can’t find me, but if you find me you find life and receive the favor of the Lord.”

When you find life, you will do to everyone in this world what it has been my privilege to do. In these moments I was taken, in the Spirit, and put into sections of humanity and stopped them. Then I released it, and they completed their action. And I stopped them again and they could go no further. A bird. A leaf. And then you ask fantastic questions in the depths of your soul. And you come to the conclusion that this whole vast world – everything in it – is a resultant state of God’s first creative act, and this was brought into being as a resultant state, and you are not these garments of flesh at all. Something is being formed in this garment of flesh. What is being formed? It is called the Son of man, but God calls it his Son, and his Son and himself are one. So God is begetting himself in man – his very own Self – and the day will come the individual will be able to say to himself; “He is not only begetting his Son, he begot his son in me, and I and my Father are one.” When you are awakened there is no other being but you and you, yourself, awake in yourself to discover you have been sound asleep and really dead for these unnumbered ages.

So when he tells you in his Letter to the Colossians: “The mystery hidden for ages and generations . . . which is Christ in you, the hope of glory,” there is a way in man that leads him to glory. But man does not know it. He thinks he is completely awake and independent. I can go back 30 years ago and I would walk on Broadway, and it happened often. I was young and strong. Not a thing was wrong with me, and yet I would walk up Broadway and all of a sudden I knew someone was arresting me and I could not walk. And I would stop in the street and I could not put one foot in front of the other, but I did not understand it, and I would be released and walk on. Then it would happen again – on the sidewalk. I could not move, and I was fully alert and conscious, but I was still. And I know, now, someone was doing to me then what I, years later, was taken in Spirit to do to others. I was being trained and prepared to do the same thing to another that was done to me. I could not move. And yet, I was playing on Broadway. I had my vaudeville shows and played everything east of the Mississippi. I was a professional dancer and nothing was wrong with me and, yet, I could not move. I could feel something holding me – not embracing me – but something binding me. I stood paralyzed. And after a minute or so, whatever it was released me. I was used as the guinea pig by someone using this power within himself as I, years later, used it on others.

So, “As the Father has life in Himself, so he grants the Son also to have life in himself,” and he is about to awaken that son and he knows it. We are being ripened – we must all conform to the image of the invisible God. When the image is coming into view, he introduces that being to the power that he will exercise tomorrow, so he takes him in spirit and shows him this fabulous world and he has control over it.

What is the world? It is a stage, but you are not the garment you are wearing. But I will recognize you. There is a sameness of identity and we will know everyone in eternity. But there is a radical discontinuity of form. So, this body of ours – face, hands, feet – yes. But not the body. You are beautiful beyond your wildest dream!

Now let us go into the silence.

QUESTION: The Bible speaks of perfect love casting out all fear.

ANSWER: If you came into a world, and you could multiply this to encompass the entire world – but should you come into a place, say, as large as this room, with an audience like this, and suddenly you knew in the depths of your soul that you, by stilling – not them, but stilling an activity in yourself, everyone would be stilled; and you did it and proved the truth of your intuition – who then could disturb you? If you were faced now with the most horrible thing in the world and you by stilling an activity in yourself made it still, and it is so still it could outlast marble; if you didn’t release that activity in yourself you wouldn’t have to embalm it, it wouldn’t decay, it would stand just as it is.

Suppose you were faced with an army of millions, armed to the teeth, but they were earthly minded, and then you stilled the activity in you that gave them motion. And suppose in you, you could change their intention or direction. You could by changing their direction march them into the ocean and when they got beyond sight, you released the activity within you, then what would happen to them? They would be once more flesh and blood and they would drown. Do you know that? But you wouldn’t do that, because you would not be afraid of man and they are only men.

So all this is processing that God is extracting his sons from man. It is from man, therefore it is man’s son. “I will raise up your son after you who shall come forth from your body, but I will be his father and he shall be my son.” So God is begetting his son in man, bringing him out of man; but he can’t deny he is a man therefore he is man’s son. It is man’s offspring but it is God’s son now, for this is going to be done differently. This that comes from the world, my son, comes from the womb of my wife; but when my son in this world came from the womb of his mother, he is brought forth from that body. He will also be brought forth from his skull. That is the second birth. There are two births; one is from the womb of woman and one is from the skull of man. That is the second reaching forth from the skull, – that is God’s son.

Now the question is asked in the Book of Timothy: “And how will woman be saved?” Because man does not quite understand generic man. The answer is wrongly translated. “Woman will be saved by the bearing of the child.” Unfortunately they put that in the foot-note and they gave as the answer: “Woman will be saved by bearing children.” It hasn’t a thing to do with any bearing of children. “Woman will be saved by the bearing of the child,” just as man is saved. But they can’t believe that man could bear a child. He can sire one but he can’t bear one. Yet the question is asked in the Book of Jeremiah: “Can man have a child, can he bear a child?” The question is not answered but God answers it by stating that he is seeing, having asked the question. “Can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands delivering himself, pulling himself out of himself just like a woman in labor.” (Jeremiah 30) And in the 2nd Chapter of Timothy: “How then will woman be saved?” and I tell you the true translation of that phrase is “By the bearing of the child.” The foot note uses it and they tell you the literal Greek is “Bearing of the child.” But they cannot understand it anymore than they could understand Jeremiah, so they say: “Woman will be saved by bearing children.” It hasn’t a thing to do with bearing children. Salvation does it entirely differently – out of the skull of generic man, male or female. The symbolism is the first step in the great Way called Christ. Christ is the way, and the first [step] is the birth of the individual by being resurrected, symbolized in the birth of a child.

They find the sign they were told they would find when this event takes place in eternity. They will find the sign and the sign is the child, and they will tell you it is your child. They will give it to you and you will hold it, as told in the Book of Luke, and you will have a joy in the Way of salvation.

There is a definite way and there is no other way. People say: “Well, there must be another way.” I swear there is no other way. Foundation is the only salvation. Don’t try to get away from it. It is the only foundation. It is all in the Hebraic world as a promise. So, it is said: “He opened unto thee the Scriptures and they said within themselves: “‘Did not our hearts burn when he opened to us the Scripture,’ and beginning with Moses and all through the prophets and the Psalms he interprets to them all concerning himself.” The whole thing is about himself ─ that is, you. Moses rejoiced. He rejoiced for what? “He endured all the fires of Egypt; he gave up all the treasures of Egypt, because he considered the wealth of Christ far greater, and he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” He endured. Read the story of Moses. How would you say that Moses, who preceded him by thousands of years, endured as seeing him? That is told in the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews: “Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible.”

Now we are told that “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day. He saw it and was glad.” How could Abraham rejoice? Everything was in preparation and then came that moment in time when the first could be brought forward, but from that moment on all are being brought forward. How many in the world? I don’t know, but all are being brought forward and not one will fail. So what is doing it? “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” So the day is coming when that moment in time you are the image of that invisible God, God is bringing forth. He can’t bring you forth until you conform to the image of the invisible God, for you must be one with your Father. That you are one with him in the true essence of the word: “I and my Father are one.”

CONCEPTION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 03-11-1968

Tonight’s subject is on conception, both on this level and the highest level. The Bible is vision from beginning to end. Words such as Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and Isaac are used, but their stories are visions. Jesus is the fulfillment of scripture, so when I speak of Jesus, I am speaking of you raised to the level where you can make the same bold statement. Jesus’ declaration that he was the fulfillment of scripture required a spiritual maturity of which most who heard his claim were not capable of understanding, but the purpose of life is to fulfill scripture.

Tonight I will speak of conception which leads to scripture’s fulfillment, as well as the shadow it casts in this world, for the same technique can be used to realize your objectives here.

There is only one Spirit. The Spirit of Man and the Spirit of God are the same. God’s first great conception is recorded in the Old Testament as a foreshadowing of the event described in the first chapter of the Book of Luke, which tells the story of an angel of the Lord who speaks to Mary, saying: “Fear not, for you have found favor with God. You will conceive and bear a son and call his name Jesus.” Wondering how this could be, since she had no husband, the angel explains the theory of supernatural conception, saying: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” Now, the phrase, “come upon” and the word “overshadow” are the same by definition, and mean “superimposition; to be superimposed upon leaving your imprint, your seal.”

In the 33rd chapter of the Book of Exodus, the Lord speaks to Moses, saying: “I will put you in a cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand, and when I have passed by I will remove my hand and you will see my back. You cannot see my glory, but you will see my back.” This is the identical story of the angel and Mary. “I will put you in a cleft of the rock.” In Hebrew the word “cleft” means “to bore; to penetrate; to pierce a quarry.” And the phrase “I will cover you with my hands” means “copulation.” Here is the creative act stated in the New Testament as: “The power of the Most High will overshadow you” for this act is “superimposition of oneself upon a being.”

To illustrate my point let me share an experience of a friend who is here tonight. On the 5th day of March, just a few days ago, she said: “I found myself awake within a dream, sitting on a slab in a huge room, sterile and brilliantly lit. I knew it was a morgue, for I could see many girls to my right, each lying on a slab, appearing to be dead. A door opened and you, Neville, dressed as a physician and your nurse, a lady with very black hair, entered. As our eyes met I knew that you had had union with every one there, even though they appeared to be dead, and I also knew that I was next. Then a vivacious young girl entered the room and placed herself on a slab next to mine. Questioning her as to the whereabouts of your wife, I was told that she was sleeping in the next room. Upon hearing this, the nurse smiled and I recognized her as your wife, but wearing a wig. Embarrassed because of the knowledge of what was about to take place, I turned to the girl, who said: ‘If you don’t want him, I’ll take him,’ and with that the embarrassment turned to anger, and I said: ‘Oh no! It is my turn.’ Then union took place and I said to myself: ‘He is like a stallion. How does he do it?’ and the vision came to its end.”

This vision has tremendous meaning, for God speaks to man in dream and reveals himself in vision. This was vision, for she was awake in the dream.

It is difficult for man to understand that God’s creative power is personalized; that anyone raised from the dead and incorporated into the body of love is Jesus Christ, creating! In her vision everyone appeared to be dead, yet union had been consummated. All things are possible to God! By burying his creative power in them, he turns death into sleep and sleep into wakefulness and wakefulness into resurrection.

Now, those who slept on the marble slabs were as Moses on the rock. The world “cleft” used in this statement means “to bore; to pierce; to penetrate a quarry.” God sends his creative power into this world of death to penetrate the dead. They will conceive and bear his child and call him Jesus. The words Jesus, Joshua, Jehovah all have the same root, which means “salvation.” And if the child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God, then God must have fathered him. He cannot be the Son of God were he not fathered by God. People think that Man is not God, but I tell you that Man is all Imagination and Imagination is God. And when your Imagination is raised from this world in which it is buried, your creative power is used to impregnate the dead and bring them out as God.

It seems insane on a certain level, but I am telling you what I know from experience, and just as God impregnates the dead on a higher level, you can impregnate a dead state on this level. Think of a state and you are its spectator. And the state will remain dead relative to you until you penetrate it, until you approach it on your fiery chariot of imaginative power. An egg, whether it be human or that of a chicken, is dead and will remain so forever until the sperm penetrates it. The sperm must penetrate and occupy the egg in order to fertilize it, and then in its own given time the shell is broken and out comes that which was the sperm that penetrated it.

A state is penetrated through the act of assumption. Assuming you are now in the state you want to externalize, you think from it and no longer of it. Thinking from, you have penetrated the state. This penetration is still the mystery of all mysteries. Man has discovered how to go to the moon, place cameras in space, yet no matter what he knows concerning the mysteries of the universe, man cannot understand how an egg can be penetrated without a hole either before or after penetration. Well, your imagination is that sperm. You do not have to open doors to get into any room; you simply enter by assuming you are in it. Look at the world from it and feel what you want to feel, and the room has been penetrated. Now remain there until you feel relief. Of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. So when you enter into (penetrate) a desire, remain there until satisfaction is felt, until you have expelled the sperm right into the state.

The Lord told Moses he would cover him with his hand, which is his creative power. To cover is to copulate. Having covered you with his creative power, you are told that he removes it. In other words, you don’t have to remain in that state. You are to go in and fertilize it, then remove your hand by returning your creative awareness to the former state.

Now it is said that you only see the back of God, but not his face. The lady who wrote the letter saw God’s face, for she was awake. All of the others were apparently dead, totally unaware of what had happened to them; so when the child is born it will come suddenly, as they will have no knowledge of conception. But they have conceived, because God never fails in his penetration, and they will all bring forth the child called the Son of God, as the symbol of their individual birth.

The lady who wrote the letter was awake when union took place, so she knows when it happened. I urge her to record this experience in her Bible next to the 35th verse of the 1st chapter of Luke. Mark it down: “On this day I conceived of the Holy Spirit.” It will take thirty years! Should she drop dead now, it will not stop the conception. Rather she would find herself clothed in a body just like her present one – young, new, wonderful, with nothing missing, for she has not conceived physically, but in her soul. The soul is God’s emanation, his wife ‘til the sleep of death is past. That’s where conception takes place, and from my own experience I say: birth will come about in thirty years. We are told Jesus began his ministry when he was about thirty years of age.

Everyone is fulfilling scripture, for everyone is Jesus Christ, he who comes only to fulfill what he foretold he would do. Taking upon himself the limitations of man (the limit of contraction and opacity) God fulfills scripture. It doesn’t matter what the individual does for a living – whether he is a mason, a carpenter, a lawyer, a banker, a billionaire, or a pauper; the question is: is he fulfilling Scripture, for only as he fulfills scripture can he leave this world of death and enter the kingdom of heaven. God foretold what he was going to do, and then he became it. Scripture is the recordation of vision from beginning to end. It is not secular history. The characters recorded there did not live as you and I do. They are the personifications of states in which you and I, the immortal being called God, pass through as we fulfill scripture.

The story told in the 33rd chapter of Exodus is a foreshadowing of that which is fulfilled in the 1st chapter of the Book of Luke, as the angel explains the theory of spiritual or supernatural conception. In the Old Testament it is said: “I will cover you with my hand.” If you take a good Hebrew dictionary you will discover this means copulation.

I know in my own case, when I stood in the presence of the Risen Lord, as we embraced we fused together. In the vision of this lady, everyone (save the physician) was female, so the fusing took place in a way that is normal for woman; but the union is not physical. Being the power of God, the image of God (which is the seed within him) is buried in the soul. Everyone appeared to be dead, and by this act God awakens the dead. We are urged to “Rise! Awake, O sleeper and rise from the dead.” In this statement the dead and the sleeper are equated. In her vision the ladies were so asleep they seemed to be dead, but she knew union had taken place with all of them. This is the part the Risen Christ is sent to play. It does not take place on this level, for his energies are turned up into regeneration. The part he plays takes place in a remote area of the soul.

Now on the 20th of October, my friend Benny experienced the birth of the child. Last night Benny called to tell me that he saw David on the 6th day of March, the very day I foretold it would happen. He has promised to write the dream in detail to me, but this is what he told me over the phone: “In my dream I was invited to a party attended by many children and their parents. Suddenly the parents disappeared, leaving me alone with the children. As I looked around I noticed a lad about fourteen years of age walking toward me. Instantly I recognized him as David, and as I looked into his eyes I knew that he recognized me as his Father. Speaking directly to me, he said: ‘I know our Father will never leave us.’ Then the dream ended.”

Here is the fulfillment of scripture. You see, God does not imitate, he does not repeat himself. In each case the same story is fulfilled, but is unique to the individual and never duplicated. Scripture says: “I go unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Here is the plural: “Our Father will never leave us.” The earthly fathers left, but the Spiritual Father will never leave us. Now I will prophesy for Benny. On the 8th day of July he will be split from top to bottom and ascend into heaven in serpentine form!

I tell you: we are only here to fulfill scripture. I don’t care what you do in this world. If you sit in the White House tonight as the president of our great country you will exercise enormous power, but it would be as nothing compared to what you will experience when you have fulfilled scripture, and of this fulfillment you cannot fail! What can it matter what you accomplish in the outer world when you leave it all to go through the little gate called death? And no one knows the furnaces still to be experienced before the birth of the child!

But may I say to my friend who wrote the letter: you may depart this world in less than thirty years, but you will not falter. Benny is only about thirty years old now, so he has no memory of the conception; but no one can choose the time, for everyone is chosen. “You did not choose me, I chose you, for no man comes unto me save my Father calls him and I and my Father are one.” No one can tell the secret of God’s elective love, but when you are full of power, you are called. You don’t volunteer, but are drafted, drawn into the state to reach its climax in thirty years!

To tell this to a vast audience would be the height of insanity, as they would not understand what I am talking about. But I tell you: your dreams, visions and experiences are symbols which you either accept and interpret or reject as an illusion, for there is nothing but God, who is your own wonderful human Imagination! There is only one Spirit in this wonderful universe. The being that maintains it all is the same being that maintains you! There is no other. “Man is all Imagination and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination and that is God Himself.” (William Blake)

And all things are possible to God! Just as an egg is penetrated, conceives, and is raised from the dead into a living state by bringing forth the express image of its person, if you bring forth the Son of God, you must have been fathered by God! My friend was awake within the dream, so she is aware of her marvelous conception. If she departs this section of time before the thirty years it will make no difference, for unlike the children here, where a miscarriage is possible, she cannot lose the child!

I have read books on sex symbolism in the Bible where these great scholars consider this passage in Luke to be pornography. If you read it on that level you will see God as a creator, creating. Every child born of woman is God creating, for he is the creator of all. But when he calls you from above, your energies are reversed and spring from above, while the energies of this world spring from below, so you move from generation to regeneration.

Now let me come back to this level and show you how to go about realizing your objectives. What you want, be it health, wealth, or fame, is only a state. Think of the state as an egg containing everything necessary to externalize itself, but dead and must be penetrated and fertilized in order to break the shell and become what the world calls reality. Let me illustrate. As I stand here before you, I desire and will assume that I am in San Francisco, approximately 500 miles from here. (I think I know this city well, but I don’t have to know a city in order to assume a state.) Putting myself in a familiar hotel lobby, I sit there and think of the world relative to the lobby in which I am now seated. While I am here I feel its reality; I feel the satisfaction of being here, the very place I wanted to be. The moment I feel the relief of being here, I have released the necessary sperm, or energy, into that dead state. Then I return to Los Angeles, but in that short period of time I have gone and prepared the experience. Now I will move across a bridge of events which will compel me to go to San Francisco. I may have no desire to go, but I will; for I have prepared the place, occupied it, and although I returned to where I was and later may resist the going, I cannot stop it, for I have created it and I will fulfill what I have done.

Now you can do this with everything. An objective, a desire, is an egg, which you can penetrate and occupy. You can move right into it and view the world from it. Don’t think of it; view the world from it, which implies that you are in it. Then feel the relief, the satisfaction, of being there. Do this and no power in the world can stop you from realizing that state. You may regret what you did, but you will fulfill it anyway. Learn your lesson and try not to do that which you do not want to experience in the future.

Everything is waiting for you to penetrate, as everything is in the cleft rock. Your desire is just as dead as a rock, so you penetrate it by going right into it, occupying, and viewing the world from it. Then, feeling the relief of being in it and the satisfaction of accomplishment, turn your back on it knowing you have done it, and allow it to objectify itself in your world.

That is a creative act on this level, just as my friend saw the creative act on another level. It frightens people just to think of this, because our moralists have the strangest concept of God. When two people love each other deeply and that love is consummated, is that something apart from God when God is love? I wish everyone would read Blake and see what he thinks of the so-called moral virtues, of those who distort the vision of Jerusalem, this wonderful being of liberty.

Tonight, know what you want and go right in and occupy it. Don’t ask anyone’s permission; just put yourself into the state you desire to experience by asking yourself this question: “How would I feel if I saw the world from that state?” Do you know you can put yourself into any state? My son actually put himself into the state of war by reading a book about Guadalcanal and falling in love with the pictures of the natives there! He certainly didn’t enjoy his experiences while there, but he asked for it. You see: nothing happens by accident. Everything that happens in the world does so because you and I set them in motion, whether we do it wittingly or unwittingly.

Again, I wanted to share my thrill with all of you in Benny’s wonderful experience of seeing David, and this lady’s vision of being sired. I promise her it will take thirty years – but what is thirty years in eternity? What is thirty years when you bring forth the Christ child? May everyone have it! God doesn’t have just one stallion; he has a wonderful stable full of those who are the resurrected Christ, those whose power has been raised from the dead and turned around from generation to regeneration. He selects those who are to be saved and sends them, under command to play the part of the creative power of God.

Believe me, God is Man. “Thou art a Man, God is no more. Thine own Humanity, learn to adore.” Everything is Man. About 4:00 o’clock this morning I saw a six-story, stark white building in vision, and as I looked at it, it became a Man. It took on the human face. All the mountains, rivers, valleys -everything is Man, and when you are awake you commune with them as friends. You walk into all the areas of the world to discover that everything is God and God is Man.

Now let us go into the silence.

DIVINE SIGNS

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 05-01-1968

Those raised in the Christian or Jewish faith are taught to believe that scripture is secular history. But I know that the story of Jesus, from his conception by the Holy Spirit to his ascension into heaven, is a sign rendered by God to those who will receive it.

The visions of the Old and New Testament are unchanged, eternal realities, which are forever. One day you will encounter what appears on paper to be a person, but he will be a state of consciousness, personified.

When Paul recognized this truth he said: “From now on I regard no one from a human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” After the revelation Paul realized that Jesus Christ was the creative power and wisdom of God, and not a person as he had been taught. But because God became Man that Man may become God, every attribute of God – whether it be faith, called Abraham, or the power and wisdom of God, called Jesus Christ – was personified.

Although addressing the Corinthians, Paul was speaking of the characters in scripture when he said: “From now on I regard no one from the human point of view.” No longer able to think of Abraham as a person (as you are a person) Paul tells this story: “It is written in scripture that Abraham had two sons. One born of a slave according to the flesh, and the other born according to the promise.” Here Paul is telling you that by your physical birth you are that one born according to the flesh. But Abraham’s second son is born of a free woman, born according to the promise.

Then Paul explains the allegory of the two sons, telling us that Hagar – a servant of Sarah – was given over to Abraham, who sired the child Ishmael (meaning, “His hand is against every man, and every man’s hand is against him”). Isn’t that this world? As an offspring of the slave, Hagar, we struggle to make a living, to pay rent and taxes, always trying to keep ourselves above the flood of illusion.

But after the vision Paul realized that there is another birth, which takes place within. Called Isaac, that second son comes from Sarah, for he is born according to the promise. This is all symbolism, for when your spiritual birth occurs a child wrapped in swaddling clothes will appear to symbolize your birth. There are two distinct births from two distinct beings. One from the womb of woman (Hagar) and the other from the skull of generic man, called Sarah. Having seen the vision and, understanding its message, Paul no longer thought of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – or any character of scripture, including Jesus Christ – as human. Even though he formerly thought of them that way and heard their story as secular history, he regarded them thus no longer.

In his 3rd chapter to the Ephesians, Paul makes this statement: “When you read the Old Testament, you will perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations, but is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit.” It was not known prior to its revelation in Paul that the mystery of Christ comes from within!

In the same letter to the Ephesians, Paul speaks of himself and those with whom he shared the vision, saying: “It has been shown us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth as a plan in Christ, for the fullness of time.” To Paul, Christ – God’s power and wisdom – is a plan of redemption, which is crucified on humanity and will be raised from the dead.

I tell you now: he has made known unto me the sacred secret of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time. And when that time is fulfilled, he who is buried in you will erupt and God’s purpose will be revealed.

The revelation of purpose gives everything meaning. You could have a million dollars and die tomorrow. Those who inherit your estate will give you lip service, but even after one generation the caring will cease and within three generations they will forget you. That is this world, but there is a plan buried in you which reveals God’s purpose and gives meaning to all life! When that plan is unveiled in you, you will know why you do what you do and dream what you dream. You will know why you have certain visions. You will realize that everything contains within itself a symbolic significance. I will show you in a very simple way.

Tonight you may dream that you have an intimate relationship with another. Upon awakening, ask yourself what the one you encountered represents to you, and a wonderful answer will come from the depth of your soul. You will discover that, on a certain level, they represent a glorious state.

For instance: I know a brilliant man who graduated from Yale at the age of 19 and remained there for many years to teach higher mathematics. As an American of many generations, he once said to me: “We should have only English speaking people in the world,” and he meant it. He was a very positive, brilliant person. If in dream you should see this man in a relationship, upon awakening you would realize he represents something positive, strong, and intellectual. Then watch, for whether one knows of the events or not, soon thereafter the one impregnated will be inspired to do something creative; for God is a creator who goes about creating, and you saw God’s creative act.

On this level you may think this is sordid, but that is because you do not know God’s symbolism. Speaking to everyone in the language of symbolism, that which the world may condemn is a glorious act of God.

God, being protean, plays all the parts. Wearing the garment of another, you see an act which could be a horrible one, based upon your concept of that individual. But if it is a lovely act, a glorious child – such as a poem, painting, or a design for a new home – will appear out of that union. That’s all the experience means; but man is so rooted in the flesh, he gives it a Caesar’s concept, which blinds him to God’s symbolism.

You may or may not believe me, but the story of Jesus – from his conception by the Holy Spirit to his ascension into heaven – is simply a sign rendered by God to those who will receive it.

I have fulfilled scripture. There are those who will accept my message, and those who will not. If you who believe my word and ever see me in vision in the creative act, it is because I am fertilizing the story of the gospel in you. I am the father of that which is being fertilized.

I refer you, now to the 4th chapter of 1 Corinthians, where Paul speaks, saying: “You have unnumbered guides in Christ, but not many fathers. I became your father in Christ.”

This is a mystery. Unnumbered people will tell you about Christ, based upon theory and speculation but not from experience. The King James Version calls these men instructors. Paul is saying that although there are many instructors, after his experiences are accepted he sires them.

Paul shared his vision, saying: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” To whom could one turn after having experienced the vision of God’s son calling him father? How could anyone tell you anything about a vision you have had? God’s son revealed himself in me, and as I tell it I draw those who will believe me. Although they may not understand, they will modify their preconceived concepts of the Christian faith to conform to what I have experienced. The union will occur and that concept will unfold within them.

God, being protean, uses Neville (or anyone who has unfolded the pattern within himself) and wearing that mask he has union with one who has accepted the story of salvation. Then, having fertilized, it the pattern unfolds within him.

In 1929 1 had union with the Risen Lord, and 30 years later, in 1959, I was born from above. If the part you are predestined to play in the body of God calls for a shorter interval, your birth may happen sooner; but my part has been a complete unfoldment of scripture, and it has taken 30 years.

We are told that when Jesus began his ministry he was about thirty years of age. This does not mean thirty years after a physical birth, but thirty years after the spiritual union. When your spiritual birth will take place only the Father knows; but we are told in the Book of Habakkuk: “Every vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it be long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.”

Paul tells us there are eight levels of the body of God: the apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, and so on. If you are destined to play other than that of the apostle, then maybe the latent time between union and birth of that particular part is not the same.

There is no dream, no vision, without meaning, for God speaks to man through the medium of dream and unveils himself in a vision. What you experience in vision is right for that particular level of your being, but when it is reduced to this level the thought would be totally wrong. Man, having eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, decides what is right and what is wrong, thereby descending into the mire of confusion. But when he turns around he discovers that nothing is either right or wrong. On a certain level it is right and on another level it is wrong. So learn to accept every level, and as you do you will ascend the tree of life to discover that every level – when viewed from there – is right when you know how to interpret it.

He has made known unto me the mystery of his sacred will according to his purpose, which he set forth as a plan in Christ for the fullness of time. I now know that Christ is not a person, and regard no scriptural character from the human point of view, but rather a state of consciousness personified. I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, but now I see him as the creative power of imagination and the wisdom of imagination, with a plan buried in that power.

I now know I am the cross God’s power wears as His plan of salvation has unfolded in me. He awoke and resurrected himself in me, and the entire story of Jesus Christ unfolded and revealed me as God the Father.

I have told you my experiences. If the world will not believe me it really doesn’t matter, for I will find my remnant – my ten per cent – who will believe my story in spite of what they formerly believed. In this audience there are those who, although they attend regularly, continue to bring their barriers with them and will not accept my story. Others, bringing their preconceived misconceptions of scripture with them, depart never to return.

A friend brought a lovely lady to the last lecture, at which time she told me she would take my theories under consideration. I told her they were not theories, that I speak from experience. Then she said: “But I am an ordained minister,” and I replied: “That means nothing to me. Have you had the vision of Christ? Did the one who ordained you have the vision of Christ? If not, it’s the blind leading the blind.”

“You can’t take my theories under consideration, only what I have experienced. If it does not fit your prefabricated misconception of scripture, all well and good, but I am sharing my visions, my experiences. They are all revelations, not theory.” She was very sweet, and left saying that this was her first lecture.

You don’t come for one time, and hear something so radically different from what you have been trained to believe and expect to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. I would ask my friend to loan her my book, Resurrection, and have her read the chapter on resurrection. It’s all documented.

I have referenced the Old Testament and – like Paul – ask you to keep my interpretation of the Old Testament in mind as you read my experiences. If so, you will find light coming from what you did not formerly understand, for the pattern has awakened in me. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old. It’s not the other way around. The pattern, the mystery of his will, remains sealed in the Old Testament until the fullness of time, when the seal is broken and individual man resurrects, fulfilling scripture.

If you test your creative power on this level, the statement: “Whatsoever you desire, believe you have received it and you will,” will no longer be a great theory given lip service, but will be known from experience. Believe you are the man (or woman) you want to be. Catch the feeling that you have already arrived. Look at your world from that assumption, knowing its truth.

Now, believe your assumption has its own appointed hour to flower. Persist in your belief and no power on earth can stop it from hardening into fact. This is Christianity!

There is no limit to your creative power. The most horrible problem will be resolved if you will but conceive a solution in your mind’s eye. Anyone can do it. It doesn’t take an Einstein to imagine a problem is resolved. Do not limit your creative power by determining the ways and means for it to come about, for imagination has at its disposal ways that are past finding out.

Do not be concerned as to how, when, or where – only the end. If you are in debt, what is the solution? That you win the lottery or an uncle dies and leaves you his fortune? No! The end is that you are debt-free. How would you feel if all of your bills were paid? Assume that feeling and let imagination harden that feeling into a fact!

Every problem has a solution. Imagine the solution and assume it is true. What would you see and do were it true? How would you feel? Persist in that feeling and in a way no one knows the solution will come to pass.

There is nothing impossible to God, and God is crucified on you as your own wonderful human imagination! There never was another and there never will be another God, and all things are possible to him. If you can imagine the end, knowing all things are possible to imagination and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true, imagination will harden into fact.

Remember, creative power will not operate itself. Knowing what to do is not enough. You, imagination’s operant power, must be willing to assume that things are as you desire them to be before they can ever come to pass.

Now, let us return to the divine signs. The Bible begins with the story of Abraham, which is an allegory – a story told as if true – leaving the one who reads it to discover its fictitious character and learn its lesson. If the story of Abraham, Sarah, and their offspring Isaac, as well as the story of Abraham, Hagar and their offspring, Ishmael, are allegories, and Abraham is the father of us all – where is the reality of the story?

The New Testament begins: “This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac and Isaac begot Jacob and Jacob begot Judas and his brother.” lf Abraham, the source of all life, is an allegory, then everything is an allegory, including Jesus Christ; for he is the culmination of the entire genealogy that begins in the first chapter of Matthew. Search and you will discover that scripture is a wonderful plan of salvation buried in Christ, God’s creative power and wisdom, who is crucified on man as his own wonderful human imagination. Knowing that the plan is contained in you, belief will awaken it.

You may be completely unaware of the moment the plan was fertilized; but it must and will be fertilized by one who has awakened from the dream of life, for the plan that is to be born is spirit. One who has not yet awakened can be used to bring about a beautiful poem, a play, or a wonderful story on this level; but God’s plan of salvation can only be fertilized by one who has already been raised from the dead, and God – being protean – will assume that mask to play that part.

Now let us go into the silence.

ELECTION AND CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

December 22, 2013

Neville 02-24-1963

Election is an act of God, not based upon any inherent superiority of those elected, but grounded in the love and grace of God and in his promises to the Father. Let no one boast who is called. Let no one boast who is elected, for all will be called, but in God’s own predetermined time. So tonight my subject is “Election and Change of Consciousness”.

God speaks to Man through the medium of dream and reveals himself in vision, and we are past masters of misinterpreting his words. A dream is a parable containing a single jet of truth. Don’t try to give meaning to every word or event of the dream. Perhaps there will be several dreams, several stories in a single dream – then each story contains its own jet of truth. Let me share one such dream of a friend. Her dream is in three parts. It is a wonderful dream on the higher level.

The lady states: “I found myself in an old, comfortable farmhouse. Outside an old horse grazed in the sun and an old dog slept under a tree. Suddenly a man appeared at my door and said: ‘You have been chosen and must leave this place.’ For a moment I panicked. What would I do about the house and the animals outside? Perhaps I could sell them or give them away. Then the man, having read my thoughts, said: ‘No, you cannot sell them or give them away. You must leave them as they are, and your leaving must be voluntary.’

The moment I chose to leave, the scene changed and I am in an entirely different world, talking to a man and a woman. They tell me that I must play three games, of which two have been completed, although I couldn’t remember playing them. Now standing in the center of a beautiful green field, I see an enormous mountain in the distance. I am told that I must run across this field, gather anything I can along the way, and reach the top of the mountain in ten seconds. Then I must interpret what I have accomplished along the way. Scooping up a few stones, I began to run, stopping occasionally to gather more stones along the way. When I reached the top of the mountain I discovered my stones had become golden nuggets which had fused together. Extending my hand for those who were there to see, I said: ‘This is my mind of golden wisdom’ and they replied: ‘You have found the way.’

Then the dream changed and I am standing gazing at a child lying in a crib. Its head appeared to be indented, as though it had been lying on rocks or sand. Rubbing the child’s head, I smoothed its skin and it smiled. Then I dressed it, made it more comfortable, and as I was feeding it I awoke, still seeing the smile on its face.”

God spoke to this lady in a glorious dream. A house is the symbol of the state from which you abide. Hers was very comfortable. A dog is the symbol of faith. Called Caleb, in scripture, he is the one who crossed the river with Joshua. He is called the hound of faith. Now, a horse is the symbol of the mind. In her case he represented a comfortable way of thinking.

Then the man appears to tell her she is chosen. (In scripture, God’s messenger is always the Lord himself, for “my name is in him”.) So the Lord appeared, not as some strange creature from outer space or as an impersonal force, but as an ordinary man. He tells her she is chosen. Chosen to leave this age. She cannot sell or give her present state of consciousness away. She must voluntarily leave it for another to occupy.

Entering an entirely different age, she meets two, and there is conflict until she reaches the mountain top where the God in her reveals the mind of golden wisdom. Now, in Paul’s last letter to Timothy, he says: “The time of my departure has come.” Then he mentions three events, saying: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” Like Paul, she has fought the good fight and finished the race, for she has kept the faith – just as everyone will – for it’s God who is doing it all.

Then she finds wisdom, personified as a little child, he who said: “Before he created the heavens I stood beside him as a little child. I was daily his delight, rejoicing constantly before him and delighting in the affairs of men. Listen to me carefully. He who finds me finds life. He who misses me injures himself. He who hates me, loves death.” She found the child. She found life. Animating bodies in this world of death, we are destined to become life-giving spirits by finding life. Having won the race, having kept the faith, having fought the good fight, she has found the child. Don’t be concerned about all the little pieces of a dream; simply see the symbols present there.

Now let me repeat once again: Scripture is not history, and the characters depicted there are not persons, but personifications of eternal states of consciousness. We all started this journey into death in the state of Abraham. In the 23rd chapter of Genesis it is said that Sarah dies and Abraham becomes a sojourner in a strange land for 400 years. Called the father of the multitude, God promised Abraham that he would return, bringing all with him. Going to the Hittites, Abraham tells them he has no land to bury his wife, and they say: “Hear us, my lord; you are a mighty prince among us. Take the choicest of our sepulchers; none will withhold his sepulcher from you, or hinder you from burying your dead.”

May I tell you: every child born of woman is God the Father, buried in the sepulcher of the Hittites, called Canaanites. Every black man, every white man, every nationality, race or creed born of woman, is a Canaanite where God the Father is buried. This was a deliberate act, not a punishment. Listen to the words in the 82nd Psalm: “God has taken his place in the divine council where he holds judgment saying: ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.’” We are the ones who deliberately fell into these garments, these sepulchers. A god is entombed in every skull. You didn’t begin in your mother’s womb. You are buried in the body your mother wove for you, and from that sepulcher you will be called in fulfillment of God’s promise.

So let me repeat: Election is an act of God, not based on any inherent superiority of those elected, but grounded in the love and the grace of God and in his promises to the Father. It is to the Father that the promise is made. Everyone has been promised that he will die and will be raised from that state. Everyone will be called from the age of death to once again enter the age of everlasting life. This lady has been called. She has been chosen and all the events recorded in scripture will take place in her.

It thrills me beyond measure to know that in this small circle so many are being called. Everyone will be called, for God is in them and God cannot fail to lift himself up in everyone. Having played all the states, as everyone must, you will have kept the faith and God will keep his promise and lift himself up, in you, just as he laid himself down in you.

It is the God in you who said: “No one takes my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again.” As God’s power is lifted up in you, you depart this age.

Now, in another’s dream, he is driving his wife’s car over a mountainous road. Suddenly the hair on the back of his head catches fire and he turns and rubs his head against the back of the seat to put out the fire. But in so doing, he loses control of the car and it goes over the cliff in slow motion. Seeing that the fall is about 300 feet, he opens the door of the car and jumps, saying to himself “This is a dream. I AM!” With that thought in mind he descends to the ground below as light and softly as a flake of snow, and awakes on his bed, saying to himself: “I have had this dream three times, and each time I have written it to Neville, but this is the first time I have awakened in the dream.”

What is the single jet of truth in this dream? He is riding in his wife’s car. A wife is that to which I AM [is] attached. A state which bears my name. There are infinite states in this world and when you enter a state you are wedded to it. The state may be one of luxury or ill health, the state of being ignored or famous; but any state is God’s emanation, his wife. The dream denotes a departure from the state in which the God in him has been residing, into an entirely different state. Perhaps he is presently wedded to a state in which he is making $10,000 a year and he desires to live in the state of earning $40,000 or even $100,000. There’s nothing wrong with that. Every state is a garment, ready and waiting for you to slip on, and you’re free to wear – and thereby marry – any state you like.

If you want to be important in the eyes of shadows, you can; but when the God in you awakes all the shadows will vanish and you will return enhanced and glorified to the being that you were prior to your descent into death, for this is the world of death. Everything here appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. You do not die when men call you dead. You are still clothed in the same garment, but younger than you were when you made your exit, to again wax, wane, and vanish, to repeat the act over and over again. This is what the Bible teaches. Read the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke: “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore.”

There are two distinct ages. We remain in this age, experiencing states over and over again until we are elected and called to enter that age. And because you are so unique you are called one by one, for no one can take your place. You are a part of the body of God, the God who deliberately fell. The God who, reaching the limit of contraction, buried himself in his chosen sepulcher (your skull), from which he will rise as promised in the beginning. “I say, ye are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you” (not just a few, but all of you). “Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.” Now I say to you, O mighty princes: the sepulcher you chose was paid for by 400 shekels of silver. (Four hundred, in Hebrew, carries the sign of the cross. The price God paid to become you.)

When Abraham entered the sepulcher, becoming a Hittite, God died by completely forgetting who I AM. He didn’t pretend, but buried himself in your skull and died, there to remain until I AM born from above. Then memory returns. But until that time, no matter what position he plays in the world, he does not know who he is. You can be the wisest of the wise, the strongest of the strong, and still not know who you are until God awakens in you. “He has taken the foolish to shame the wise. He has taken the weak to shame the strong. He has taken those who are low and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.”

Jesus Christ is defined as the power of God and the wisdom of God. “He is our source, having been made our wisdom, our righteousness and our redemption.” God’s own power is Christ Jesus. His own wisdom is Christ Jesus, and he has made Christ Jesus your wisdom and your redemption; therefore Christ in you is the hope of glory, for when Christ returns, God has gathered his creative power and wisdom back unto himself – that power and wisdom which was buried in man.

My friend, in her vision, brought her golden nuggets back to the top of the mountain, where all of her experiences in the world of death were gathered together and fused into the one mind of golden wisdom. So God enhances himself; having reached the limit of contraction he expands. Having reached the limit of opacity he becomes translucent; therefore, he is far greater than he was when he fell into the Hittite.

When a little child is born, he lives because God buried himself in him. Do not think that because someone is going to the gas chamber tonight he is less than you are. Do not allow anyone to pull his rank on you either, for no one is important in this world. There is no one but God who is buried in every person in the world, and every person is equal. So let me repeat: election is an act of God, not based upon any inherent superiority of those elected, but grounded in the love and grace of God and in his promises to the Father. Everyone was promised that he would be redeemed, and God has kept his promise.

Christ Jesus in me is God’s power and wisdom, and when redeemed, I am he, for everything said of him I have experienced. I still wear a garment called Neville, but I have awakened to another age. I am still the same man in the world of Caesar. I still sign my name on my checks, and the shadows who receive them can exchange them for more shadows based on my signature. But the being that is called into an entirely different world was before the beginning, but enhanced now because of the experience. So everyone is richer for coming into this world, for God’s creative power has been enhanced.

The child she saw is a symbol of her transformed creative power. She has experienced a change of age. But the man experienced a change of state. I can tell him tonight that the dream doesn’t mean he is departing this world. He has a wife to support and little children to educate. The dream has nothing to do with breaking his neck here, or divorcing his wife, for he is not married to her, but to a state in this world. He leaves a state and enters another – be it noble or ignoble – for he was driving his wife’s car when he awoke to realize it was a dream.

Now, in the waking dream you can learn to control your imagination so that you can set in motion your status from one level to another, but you cannot change the age. That comes out of the blue. That comes when you least expect it. No one can earn the exit from this age. That comes upon you suddenly, as promised in the beginning. So let no one boast and tell you they earned the kingdom. We are all put through the furnaces for his own sake, for his name he cannot give to another. It is yours, as promised, before the beginning of the world. “I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.” Here is pre-existence, incarnation, departure, and pre-destination. It takes not just three-score-and-ten, but a long, long while. And the pigment of your skin, your social or intellectual position, has nothing to do with your departure from this age.

If you want the shadow of worldly fame you may have it, but it will not aid you in waking from the dream of life. If you will fall in love with what I am talking about, and set your heart fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Jesus Christ in you, you are on the verge. But if that doesn’t interest you, and more money does, then get more money. If you want more cash, more fame, whatever you desire – get them, for they are all shadows. A big home is a big shadow, and a little home a little shadow, so it doesn’t really matter.

But tonight, dwell on these two. Like the lady, you cannot earn, any more than she earned it, for she was called. But like the other, you can leave the state to which you are now wedded. How do you do it? By the act of feeling. Feel the tones of reality that would be yours were you wedded to the state of your fulfilled desire. What would the feeling be like were you the person you would like to be? Feeling moves you from one state to another.

Everything is a state which is real, yet invisible. Not knowing this, and seeing no evidence to support your desired state, you may return to the former one. Expecting the new state to happen now, you don’t remain faithful to it. But if you will remain there until it becomes natural to think from that state, it will be born in your world. There is a period of time between your entrance into the invisible state and its visibility, and it has to come. Everything has an interval of time. The vision has its own appointed hour. If it seems long, wait. It is sure and it will not be late. A little sheep takes five months, a man nine months, a horse one year. All these are fixed intervals of time.

How long will it take for a state to become objective? As long as it takes the nature of that seed to hatch. All you are called upon to do is to go into the state and remain there psychologically. Although you will continue to physically walk the earth as one person, as you think from your desired psychological state, it takes on physical tones and becomes a fact in your world. This is how you move from state to state as you wait for the promise of God to fulfill itself.

On that day you will be called and incorporated into his immortal body to express a far greater translucency and expansion than you knew prior to the start of your journey into the world of death. I can’t tell you the thrill that is in store for you when you experience the embrace of love. There are no words to describe it, but as you embrace, you fuse to become one body, one Spirit, yet without loss of identity. Everyone will be called into that same union. Everyone will experience the end of the journey, for not one will be lost in all my holy mountain.

Now let us go into the silence.

ESAU AND JACOB

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 11-13-1959

As I promised last Tuesday, I now want to give you my personal technique [I use] when I pray for myself or for others, but for the benefit of those who are here for the first time, I want to say that we believe here that Imagination creates Reality. And because only God creates Reality, your Imagining and my Imagining are one with the Supreme Power men call God.

In order to tell you of my technique I must go back and give you the reasons. I will go back to my personal experiences and tie them together with the Bible. It speaks of the birth of a child in Genesis 25, the child of Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca, desiring to conceive after twenty years of barrenness, prayed unto the Lord and the Lord responded to her prayer, and she felt this strange struggle going on within her and she wondered why, and the Lord said: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger.” And then at the moment of delivery out came first a red, hairy being, and then came another whose hand was holding the heel of the first and he was smooth-skinned and hairless. The first was called Esau and the second was called Jacob. Now the story is, “Bring me Jacob!” If you remember it, Jacob took Esau’s birthright and then he took his blessing, and Esau said to his father, Isaac, “Have you no blessing for me?” And Isaac his father said, “You shall live by the sword; you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.” That was the only blessing he could give to his first-born son, for he had given it all to Jacob, which means “the supplanter”. It makes no sense if you take it literally. It has nothing to do with persons called Rebecca or Esau or Jacob. It is all within you that this drama is unfolding.

I was seven years old when it happened to me, and I found myself an infinite stormy ocean. I was the ocean, and yet I was Neville. It seemed unconcerned as to what it did to Neville and it tossed Neville like a wave and Neville was scared almost to death. The ocean did not care, yet I, Neville, was also the ocean. This happened once a month from my seventh to twelfth year, and I could tell from the strange sense of expectancy I felt during the day when it was going to happen. I dreaded to go sleep for when I began to go to sleep then I became one with this immensity, and it was all this great ocean, and then a separation took place between the ocean and its wave, but I was still the ocean. Month after month this division took place until my twelfth year. Then it vanished.

When I was twenty-one, it returned on a different key. One night I was contemplating Samadhi and as I was reading this book on the life of Buddha (The Light of Asia). I fell into an involuntary trance. When I awoke the sun was up and I had not moved for ten hours, but during that interval I became infinite liquid light. I was not then divided; there was nothing but light. I was the One Reality and I was Infinite Light. That was the second experience.

Then came others of a secondary state of this division. I was projected with a certain intensity out of my body. I became aware for the first time of this division and that I was more than just this being of flesh and blood. I was out, and this Reality was in the room looking at this body on the bed. Then I desired to get back into the body, integrating as a unit, and do it consciously. I did it, and then with a deliberate conscious intention I intensified this power and I felt myself moving out again. I desired to come down into the room, and I made a sort of loop. A cloud formation was over the head but everything was in detail. I could see through the breaks in the cloud the face that I see every day in the mirror – my face. I tried to go through the wall and I could not, and then I made a great leap at the wall and knocked myself back into the body again.

Man thinks that when he looks into a mirror that that is all he is. Burn him up and he is gone! It is not so at all. Man that appears from the womb is this picture of the twin that comes into the world. Every child that comes from woman is Esau. You may be quite hairless by normal standards, but you are still Esau. He changes his name from Esau to Edom, which means “redness” or “red blood.” This being always comes first into the world, and after him comes one to supplant him and that is Jacob. You do not see Jacob. He is hidden. So it said that he had no hair. He lived in a tent. That tent was Esau.

Then comes the separation, for God and only God brings about that separation and God is that infinite ocean that will take this being and toss him over and over to bring about this separation. There is something in man that brings about this separation and separates Jacob from Esau. “Have you no blessing for me, Father? You asked me to bring you venison and now I discover my brother has deceived you.” Surely he is well named “the supplanter”. “He took my birthright and then my blessing, but surely, Father, you have a blessing left for me.” This is it: “You shall live by the sword; you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.”

There is something in this body that can break loose from this commanding power, and then it dies. That is all Esau can do. So this garment – the body – is under command to obey Jacob. Jacob is all Imagination. There is a being in man that divides this garment that moves by compulsion, and when he breaks loose, there is no Esau.

Isaiah 49: “He who forged me from the womb formed me to bring Jacob again unto him.” All He wants is Jacob. He wants to awaken in every being a Center of Imagining and that Center is called Jacob, the little one. “How will he stand, for he is so little?” I scare him to death, but I do it to make him alive, and a Center that can create. In the later gospels it is called Jesus, the Supreme Being that rules the world.

Now, from these experiences I saw the Bible differently. I would read the Book and see it differently. I have had only one real beating in my life and that was by a man who blew out his brains six months later. He asked me about a Bible passage. “What does it say?” I said, “Take up your bed and walk.” He said, “Bring me the book! I said, “My brother has it.” There were nine of us, and we did not have nine Bibles; my brother Cecil had it and I could not get it. This teacher brought out a cane, a long supple thing, and then I had to get over a bench and then he simply took out on my body what it took to explode a sexual expression in him. Then he stopped, and I was bleeding. Six months later he shot himself. It was all because of that passage in the Bible that he beat me. But maybe that was part of the pattern when I misquoted, according to his standard, for his version said, “take up your couch,” and mine said “bed.” But it only means that on which one was resting. It was only a part of the pattern, so I was being tossed by that ocean. But it seemed not to care about this which it tossed. But still, though it was scared, it knew it could not cease to be, and so it was part of a plan to separate it so that it could become a Center for creation. So I saw the Bible differently.

What is the technique? In my 21st year when I meditated I became identified with the bliss I contemplated as a sea of golden liquid light. Then I understood. Absorption! That was the secret. If I became completely identified with a state – and named it – to the degree that I became absorbed – it worked. What became absorbed? Not the garment – Esau. It was Jacob, which is all Imagining. Jacob had to be separated from Esau. “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger.”

I discovered that the thing divided from this which I washed and fed, was my Imagination. And then I found I could put my Imagination any place in space. I put it into my own nephew, and when my sister looked at her son, who was about to make his exit, she saw not his face, but mine. For I laid down Esau and became Jacob, and became Billie, and determined to be seen by my sister, and my sister saw, not her son lying on the bed, but her brother Neville. That night she wrote to me that she had seen my face and not Billie’s.

When I wanted to go to Barbados and did not have a penny, I slept in my Imagination in Barbados and saw the world from Barbados, and I went there through the efforts of my family, who thought they had initiated the trip. When I identified myself with a state, others responded. They moved like automatons. And then I wondered if I should do it, and then I went back to that passage in Genesis: “You shall serve your brother.” And every man in the world you shall serve. And then you feel right about it. This one was imagining and every being in the world is serving him. You do not have to ask anyone in the world to help you, no matter what “they” say. Esau can only live while you have your yoke upon his neck; and when he breaks that yoke off his neck, Esau dies. Yet he perpetuates himself constantly before he dies, that Jacob may put his yoke on another neck. And Jacob is called in the New Testament, Jesus Christ.

Here is an exercise that I have found very helpful. At home, where I know what every part of a given room looks like, I sit in a chair facing one wall, and with my eyes closed, I “look” ahead and see not the wall that is in front of me, but the one that is behind me. I see that wall in my mind’s eye and it is now in front of me. Then the room has reversed itself, or I have reversed myself. Throughout the whole Bible there is this tone of reversibility. I discovered as I read it that it means this. So I see what is behind me as if it were in front of me.

Here is another exercise. I would sit physically in my living room in New York City and assume that I was actually standing on the street in front of my apartment house, and standing there on the street I would see details on the marquee of the building. Physically I was in my living room on the sixteenth floor but in my Imagination I was on the street and I was seeing it. Then, still in Imagination, I would walk back into the building, come upstairs and sit down where Esau was. And the next time I actually did go out and took Esau, when I reached the street and looked at the marquee I saw on it what I had not noticed the last time I looked at it physically.

Luckily for me when this began to appear when I was seven, there were no psychoanalysts in the little island of Barbados, and if there had been, my father could not have afforded them. They would not have known what was happening to me. Luckily for the work I was to do, I was born there on this little island that had no importance in the world – and no psychoanalysts! So no one could disturb what my Father was doing to bring about this separation. It went on for five years, from seven to twelve, and then I was torn apart, but I did not lift that being out until I was twenty-one and saw it differently. There were not two of us, but I was “It”, and I could say “I and my Father…” but in the beginning I could only call it a stormy ocean. I was “It” and I was also Neville. When I was twenty-one I saw it and became absorbed in it – or else there was no Neville.

There came this separation on different levels to show how you can pray. You can be anything in this world. I would take a piece of wood, or a flower, or an animal and try to feel myself as it, and I finally could feel what it would be like to be a glass of water. For everything emanates from Divine Imagining, and I am “It”, so then I am everything. There is nothing but Divine Imagining, and “It” and human Imagination are one.

Let us come back now to the practical side in dollars and cents. A good friend of mine here got a letter from another friend who is a professor and whom I admire very much, but professors are so pedantic. They are so filled with knowing and with data already outdated in view of present findings, that they are actually, you might say, full of ignorance! Man is unfolding so rapidly that you are learning from books known to be inaccurate and mistaken. You take unrevised books and commit things to memory and you get your degree in a university. This professor (Raynor Johnson???) wrote my friend regarding the title of my book, Your Faith Is Your Fortune. He wrote, “You would like me to comment? I presume he took the statement ‘Your face is your fortune’ and just changed the one word.” He did not read the book, yet it says in the Book of Proverbs, “He who answers before he hears, it is shame and folly to him.” Did you dare to answer before you heard the question? And yet you are not only a professor but also the master of a college in the University.

This professor is coming to our land and I will recommend that you go to hear him. He completely disapproves of the words “Faith” and “Fortune,” yet his motive in coming here is still to take back to his own country – m-o-n-e-y! There is no other reason for his coming, for he is from a department using books already outdated, so what can he give us? So I said to my friend: “He has, like so many wise people, mechanical talents, and anyone can take from the inspired work of mystics and write many books and collect money on them.” He is coming here only to make some money.

But I talk not about a book, but about the book – the Bible. I went through all these experiences and I know that the secret is identification with the ideal, no matter what it is. If you want money – what is wrong with that? This one who is coming here will not refuse the check when it is offered to him! Who is fooling whom in this world? But you are told “Thank you, Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and pious and revealed them unto babes.” So, keep company with the babes and shun the so-called wise and holy people.

When this division takes place in you, that is God, and you do not need the help of anyone. For everything came upon Jacob, and only the sword was given to Esau. So this Esau (the body) takes food into his stomach and it must be transformed into bone and blood. It is a stormy process. And the very moment that he breaks loose from the yoke Jacob has placed on his neck, Esau is dead. It does not matter, for the immortal you is Jacob and you cannot cease to be. Let no one tell you that money or anything else is wrong if Jacob wants to exercise his talent for that. Every Esau has to serve Jacob. If you find Jacob and you dwell in the state and become completely absorbed in it, all the Esaus have to serve you to fulfill that state, and no power in the world can stop it. Read it carefully. “You shall live by the sword, and you shall serve your brother.”

Esau had to marry the Canaanite, and the word means, “that which would humiliate,” but whom did Jacob marry – that which came out of Laban – the ideal of the world. The “garments” marry the Canaanite. If my old teacher, Ab, were here, he would frighten you to death. He used to say, “If anyone stands before you, and you think him so important, strip him and let him perform the normal functions of life – and you will turn your back on him.” Jacob commands the world and Jacob is Imagination. No one has ever seen Jacob because he is like his Father, completely invisible, and then you arrive at the point where you discover your own invisibility.

J.W. Dunne, whose books are known to you, asks, “How can you see something that has no edges?” He asked the angel who appeared to him, “Why can they not see the shadow God is casting over the world?” And the angel replied, “Because it has no edges.” He thought that was right, for it is impossible to see a “this” without a “not this” to make comparison. But that is not true, for when man discovers Jacob, he has no edges, but he is more real than all the Esaus of the world. He is everything, and all things at all times.

Here is a statement made by Aldous Huxley regarding D. H. Lawrence. “He was a strange man but he seemed to know what he was talking about. He knew what it was to be a cow or a daisy. He knew the emotions of his favorite cow, and he knew what it was like to be a daisy. He knew what it was to be the moon!” Huxley did not understand; he had mechanical talents and he could describe these things as they were described to him by D. H. Lawrence.

Something is taking place in you and God is doing it, for the depth of your being is God, and when this is done then Jacob is divided from Esau. Everything is given to Jacob, and “never shall the scepter fall from his hand.”

So I have given you my technique in praying. I do not assume the responsibility for making anything so after I have identified myself with the state that I desire, I let it be so. It may take a day or a week or a month, and sometimes I never hear about it, but I know it must come true, for my word cannot return unto me void. I see what I want to see, and then I let it be true. I do not lift a finger to make it true, for how can I discuss it when it is already so. Whenever you have imagined yourself as you want to be and you have felt the thrill of it, that is Jacob’s command and the outer being has to move through all these states to fulfill it.

The greatest visions in the world are in the Bible. Let this one or that one justify their little comments on the words “Faith” or “Fortune.” The act of faith is the power of God working in man to justify the way of man in need.

So, I sit down in my chair and I see before me what is not physically before me, and then I am turned around. This outer garment – Neville – was put through all the paces from seven to twenty-one, and then came this fulfillment of July 21st of this year (the birth of the Babe out of my own being) and I saw the complete separation of that little one called Jesus Christ from that which is Esau. Out of Esau came Jacob, and out of Mary comes Jesus Christ, and both come from a separation or a tearing away. It has nothing to do with dogma. Do you want it to be? Well, you name it, identify yourself with it; completely absorb yourself with it. The outer man cannot do it, so the inner man has done it, for he has commanded that “you shall serve your brother.” This hairy garment comes first and then comes the one you cannot see, and that is Jacob. So no matter who you are, this is the plan of God to awaken sons. This outer world seems to come first, but it comes to awaken God who created it. When he individualizes himself, what he wants most is Jacob. The whole of the physical world is completed, and we are told it is now melting in radiation, and then when the yoke is taken from Esau’s neck, he is dead.

Let no one tell you that you are some little worm. You are here because there is that child of God to be separated from the outer form by which you are recognized when you walk the street. Exercise this power for everyone in the world and not only wish them well but identify yourself with your wish for them. Then it is done, and you do not need to raise a finger to make it so, you let it be so. They will conform to what you have done. It does not matter who they are, whether they are simple people or if they have degrees: these degrees are given by Esau to Esau, and you are only concerned with Jacob. Isaiah 49: “He who formed me from the womb to be his servant and to bring Jacob to him again.” There in your Bible you will read it. “How can you find him? He is so small. How can Jacob stand?” He will stand all right! How small he is I know, for the infinite ocean tossed me on its back and I know it did not care. It was doing it for a purpose; I was tossed all over its infinity. I was afraid to go to sleep when I sensed the approach of these nights, and then when I closed my eyes this separation took place. He was pulling me out of Himself. That was the great ocean of life. When you understand this you will know what the Flood means, and the true meaning of the story of the Ark.

So tonight if I could give you my technique in essence, it is this: I sit quietly in a chair; I do not lie down for that position is associated with sleep. I sit in a chair and I imagine and become absorbed and identified with whatever another asks of me as if it were already realized. To me it is then real and they are standing before me and telling me the exciting news of having realized their dream. If physically they were in tears it would make no difference, for that is only Esau and I know that he must go through something to bring Jacob; I am not interested. Esau must serve Jacob. If they call me next day and tell me the most awful story it does not matter, for they started when Jacob gave the command, and all the blessings of the universe were given to Jacob and everyone has to serve him. If they call me to say they have been fired, I say, “Good!” When they had been fired, they became the fulfillment of what I had heard for them, and they will find that it was the turning point to take them to what they desired. Afterward they may forget how it happened, but you, do not forget that it was Jacob who gave the command. Now call him by a new name and call him Christ Jesus. Read the genealogy and you will see: Esau came first, then Jacob; John came first and then Jesus. They both came in a miraculous way. Isaac’s wife was barren for twenty years, and then he prayed. Jesus was born of a virgin; it has nothing to do with a man or a woman. I am every character in the Bible and these are only imaginal activity, and this was an imaginal activity that could pull out of itself what it desired.

Everyone that comes from below (by physical birth) has to come first, and that is Esau, and he will be torn apart so that he will be separated and then the Child is born, and then there is no limit to the translucency or expansion of the son of God.

Let us go into the silence.

QUESTION: Will you explain further about seeing another part of the room?

ANSWER: Practice bi-location. This is the tearing apart of Jacob from Esau. Sit in one room of your home and view another room, and see what you would see if you were physically there, and you tear yourself apart. Do not walk completely integrated, as a being that is only a garment of flesh: that is Esau. For man is all Imagining and he is always where he is in his Imagination.

If you desire security let no one tell you it is not spiritual. Those who say it is not spiritual are the first who will ask you for a handout! Let no one tell you that you should not have what you want in this world. It is yours if you know who Jacob is and who Esau is. Be ready to go through anything. Esau has to go through it; Esau is the slave of his brother. Jacob is the master. When you break loose from his yoke upon your neck, you are dead. Do not be embarrassed at what you lose. The best thing you can lose is false pride. You may have to go through the furnaces to lose false pride, for it is Jacob’s command.

QUESTION: How do you see this golden light?

ANSWER: I sit quietly and turn my eyes inward as if I am looking into my skull. In a moment a golden light begins to glow. Light begins to appear and it looks like golden liquid light and it comes before my eyes and then it goes out in circle after circle, like smoke rings, and these increase in rate and then they become like a funnel with the big end at my face.

Another exercise I practice: I take a table or a rug. I do not look at it, but focus my attention beyond it, and with my eyes partially open; I try to look below its surface. Suddenly the whole thing will become alive. There is nothing dead in this world. This rug at which you are looking seems inanimate, but suddenly in its depths people will appear. Do not be afraid and you will walk into it. You, the real you, are not contained within the spatial boundaries of this body, that is only Esau. But you are an immortal being and you can step through the seeming solid.

If you would like confirmation of this technique, read the life of DaVinci. He said that is how he got all of his paintings. He was the first one to give us the model of the airplane. Before the Wright brothers were thought of, he drew it. He said that when he wanted to paint he would look into a mottled wall and then all these people came out dressed in costumes, and they were not paid models!

Take a wall in your home, or look at the fireplace stones: they will become so familiar, and then the wall will change its face. It changes with your mood. Often it is a little girl; then it changes and is something entirely different. Your senses begin to expand, for there is something in every child born of woman that is immortal. I personally have no experience to confirm reincarnation as commonly taught, but I do have many experiences concerning worlds within worlds. I cannot tell you if the popular conception of reincarnation is true or false. I know I have always been, and I know I was sent, and that world from which I was sent is real to me, yet I had to go through what this world calls birth, but I do not call that reincarnation. That is the awakening of the sons of God and there is only one and that is Jacob or Jesus Christ.

The immortal being in you has never been tarnished; you cannot tarnish Jacob. Esau has to go through all these things, and fight all the way. We think there must be some redemption for Esau, but it is Jacob who has been given full control of the whole. We clothe and feed – and even insure – Esau. The being that cannot die is not insured, but we insure Esau.

Read it carefully in the new translation, the Nelson edition. They put it like a poem, and it stands out like a gem:

“Two nations are in your womb,
And two peoples, born of you,
Shall be divided;
The one shall be stronger than the other;
The elder shall serve the younger.”

I was seven before I knew about Jacob, Jacob did not like being tossed about by his Father. And then when I was twenty-one I learned I was nothing but golden liquid light.

ESAU – JACOB – ISRAEL

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 02-12-1963

We are told by Paul in II Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The word “righteousness” is described for us in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “right thinking.” We are also told there is a three-fold cord that is not quickly broken. It is built like the ark, on three levels: the physical level here, the psychological level, and the spiritual level.

Tonight we are taking three characters of Scripture: Esau, Jacob, and Israel. I think I have broken this cord – in fact I am convinced of it, so I would like to share with you what I know of these levels. They are not persons as we are; they are states of consciousness through which the immortal soul passes on its way to God.

We read this story in the 25th chapter of Genesis. We are told that Rebecca was childless and that she and Isaac prayed to God that they may be blessed with a child, and God responded. That is what we are told all through the Bible, this response to prayer for a child. In this case they are twins. And the Lord said unto her: “Two nations are in your womb and two people born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other and the elder shall serve the younger.” Now here is a prophecy, before the children were brought into the world, which one would excel. Here is predestination – you cannot interpret it in any other way. They are brought into the world, they haven’t committed either good or evil, and yet one is predestined to excel. He is the younger – Jacob, the supplanter – and the first one, Esau, must serve him. But I tell you: these are states of consciousness. Or we can take them on different levels.

We are told in the same chapter of Genesis that the first son he gave me was red all over, like a hairy animal, so they called him Esau. His other name was Edom – like Adam – spelled in the same way [in Hebrew], the red earth, the red being. That’s the first one, who must now serve the younger. The second came out holding in his hand the heel of the first, and he was called Jacob, the supplanter.

We are told the first one was a hunter, a man of the fields, and the second one was a smooth-skinned lad who lived in a tent. So on this level it is the outer and the inner man. No matter how hairless you seem to be, just put a magnifying glass on the body and you will see the body is completely covered with hair (you may call it a fuzz but it is hair) and the most external thing in this world of man is hair; next will be skin. The second one has no hair, so, hairless – that is the inner man. Putting it now into our language so that you and I can understand it and apply it, the outer man is a man of sense. I am in this room right now and everything seems so real, more real than anything else in the world. I know this room by reason of my bodily organs. My senses allow it and my reason dictates it. This is fact; all this is real.

There is an inner man and he is skilled in arranging things so that they reach to desired ends, not based upon the evidence of the senses. The inner man, by standing here, could desire to be elsewhere and deny the evidence of my senses, denying reason, dare to assume I am where I would like to be, and rearrange the furniture of my mind. Instead of using this to tell me I am here, I use other furniture – objects of my mind. Here I rearrange it and remain faithful to that state until it takes on the tones of reality. And when it seems to be sensory vivid and I open my eyes upon it, I am shocked to find I am still here. That is the inner man, called Jacob, the supplanter – he takes the place of the outer man. He supplanted his brother twice. First he took his birthright, then he took his blessing; so these are the two in conflict and the whole story is one of conflict.

Eventually, after unnumbered ages, Jacob will be given the name of Israel, “a man after God’s own heart.” It seems to come soon, but it doesn’t really. No one knows the length of time between the awakening of these two states of consciousness and the fulfillment in the form of Israel. But you must read the Bible from all angles.

First Esau is Edom. In the story of Job the hero is an Edomite, all the characters are Edomites, and the whole play is laid in Edom. “Edom” means the “red earth”. We are told the first one to make a name for himself by subduing all the Edomites was named David. (Read it in 2 Samuel, 8. He is the first king of Israel chosen by Jehovah. Saul was chosen by the people, but rejected by Jehovah. Here is one, David, chosen by Jehovah – the first king of Israel. Israel means “a man after my own heart. “Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.” That is what he said when he saw Nathaniel, and only the pure in heart can see God. “I have found David, a man after my own heart, one who could subdue the Edomite.” That comes way beyond this initial story of the parents of the two boys. It is all in us.

I am told, as you are told tonight, that it is possible that I can assume I am the man I would like to be. If I dare to remain faithful to that assumption and not waver in it – and to the degree that I am loyal to that assumption – it will crystallize and become a fact. I need not appeal to any person in the world to help me. I can do it all by myself if I know of the existence of the Being in me who is skilled in arranging things so that it leads to a desired end. How would I arrange the furniture of the mind to reach the desired end, but name the end first – the end is where I begin. My end is my beginning.

This is a very simple story; it is a true story. A man – an engineer who had never earned twenty thousand a year, he had never earned beyond ten – I said to him: “Where would you work if you made your twenty thousand?” He said: “I have picked out the job – they don’t know it, but the building is on Madison Avenue. I know exactly the floor, I have ridden up in the elevator, I have gotten off at the floor and walked into the office. I know where I would sit were it true that I work there; where I will hang my hat and when I take off my coat where I will put it. I know exactly what I will do.” I said: “Al right, now stand in that elevator and go up, see it stop at the floor and get off, walk right into the place, take off your hat and jacket, and just simply be natural in the job.” Within two weeks he was on that job at twenty thousand a year.

He traveled all over the near east aiding in the building of dams and all kinds of these fantastic things he loved, after this last world war. One day he didn’t feel well, closed his eyes and made his exit from this world, but he had five years to exercise his Jacob. What does it matter when we go from this sphere? It doesn’t really matter. Before he made his exit he discovered David, and if there is evidence of a thing, what does it matter what you or I or anyone thinks about it or wish about it? But he proved it and lived by it for five years. I can multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of the exercising of Jacob.

Jacob comes second – bear this in mind. The whole vast world, three billion of us, we only know the existence of Esau. We know the man, he was born in a certain social structure, and that’s it. He had no financial, social, intellectual, or other support behind him, and life is rugged. That is Esau, that is Edom. And then comes this story and he is made aware of another one that will be brought forth, and that one’s name is Jacob, the supplanter. And you tell him what you would do were you he, and he tries it, and he does it, and quite often having done it once, he forgets it and he goes back and serves Esau.

Then comes that moment in time when he hits the third level of the ark, the spiritual level, and knows the thing is literally true on the third level. All these stories are literally true on the spiritual level. It is only the psychological level [where] there is something different. Like I stand here and assume I am elsewhere and I see the world as I would if I was standing there physically, then I open my eyes to find there isn’t any difference, and I am shocked I am not actually there. I have gone to prepare a place, having gone to prepare a place I returned here, but I will now move across a bridge of incidents – a little series of events, leading from where I am physically to where I am consciously. I try it again, and as I try it and it works I am becoming aware of Jacob.

What about Esau? Jacob wrestled all through the night of human darkness and ignorance with the Lord himself, but he couldn’t grant him what he asked for. He had to change his name before he could give him what he asked for. He changed it from Jacob, the deceiving one; for he deceived his father-in-law, his brother, his father – he deceived everyone. But even though he deceived them, he was God’s chosen vessel.

I deceive myself when I stand here and persuade myself that I am elsewhere. I deceive myself when I persuade myself you are what you would like to be. If I forget what you told me you are, and think only what you would like to be, and when I am self-persuaded you are such a person, I am self-deceived. So, Jacob is the deceiving one. He comes into the presence of his father; he has no hair, while his brother is covered all over with red hair. And with the aid of Rebecca – the mother, he takes two goats, slaughters the goats, takes the hair, the skin, covers his hands and the nape of his neck, and puts on the robe of his brother that he may deceive the father when he comes into the father’s presence. The father said: “Who are you?” He said: “I am your son, Esau.” He said: “Come closer, I can’t see you, come closer that I may feel you.” So he comes closer and the father feels him, and he said: “You feel like Esau but your voice sounds like Jacob.” He said: “I am your son Esau.”

He persuaded the father he was Esau and the father gave him the blessing that belonged to Esau. Then, when the father had completely acted, he could not now take it back, because God swears by himself and cannot take back his oath or change it. When he saw Esau coming from the hunt to discover his treachery, he said: “He is well-named, for twice he has taken from me,” supplanted me. So the father gave Jacob the blessing.

I clothe myself in imagery by rearranging the furniture of the mind, seeing myself and having you see me, as I would like to be seen by you. When I see you in my mind’s eye seeing me as you would see me were it true that I am what I am assuming that I am, then I am pre-clothed. Now to what degree can I fool myself? To what degree can I actually become all the characters and play now the part of Isaac and let myself be Isaac and believe what I am doing is real and true? Can I believe in the reality of that imaginal act? Yes, I’ve done it unnumbered times and it worked. Whenever I do it with persuasion to the point of acceptance, it worked, and I found my Jacob.

Now, there is another one. I have to find Israel. Israel is on the highest level, a man after God’s own heart. How do you find him? There is not a thing in this world you can do to find him; it is revealed. It just happens, and this is how it happened to me. One night I saw these two fantastic creatures; I saw Esau and he is just as he is described, covered from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet with red hair, just like a huge big ape. And here, Jacob – instead of being a man, Jacob is the most glorious female you could ever imagine. Here is an angel beyond angels, and here is Esau, this monster-thing thriving on violence, thriving on everything that is evil in this world, living on it.

And I thought when I saw the two of them that they existed independent of my perception of them. I didn’t know they did not. I did not know I had never severed the umbilical cord, that they are my children. I am the being spoken of as Rebecca, who gave birth to both of them, one, the embodiment of any unlovely thought I have ever entertained. Every time I have ever exercised my imagination unlovingly on behalf of another, it simply energized this unlovely creature. Every time I acted or reacted violently, I fed and energized Esau. And looking at Esau, I had a desire without turning to anyone to ask their help or to pledge myself in their presence, and I pledged myself that I would redeem this monster if it took me to eternity. Such a creature should not live in this world and I, in my ignorance, gave him birth – this monstrous thing that fed and lived on violence. In my blindness he would whisper in my ear throughout the 24-hour day, yes, even in my dreams and urge me to violence and urge me to react in the unlovely way.

Then I saw what he was. I still did not know at that moment that he was not independent of my perception of him. But I said I would redeem him. At that very moment that I said I would redeem him if it took me eternity, I discovered he was not an entity as you are; he was nothing more than an embodied force. Here was all my misused, misspent energy throughout eternity, for this monstrous thing before my eyes melted and left no trace of ever having been present; but as it melted, all the energy that it embodied came to me, it returned to me who gave it.

I have never felt such power in my life. Everything came back to me and this glorious creature that was the personification of all my noble acts, my lovely acts, my ever-loving thought, every state – she glowed, and this one melts before my eyes. So I tell you: you will meet both of them. They are present now. You can’t see them at the moment but they are present wherever you go, but I tell you of them after you exercise Jacob. Every time you persuade yourself of something loving, something lovely – even though reason at the moment denies it and your senses deny it, everything denies it – to that degree you are so persuaded, you are feeding this glorious creature and you are denying food to this monster. It isn’t his fault; we gave him birth. As the poet said: “Alas, two souls are housed within thy breast, one to heaven does aspire; the other to earth doth cling.” Two are housed in the breast of every being and that is part of the structure of this world. Everyone is bringing into the world these two and they are invisible until that moment in time when you wrestle the testing of God and your name is changed from Jacob, to Israel. Then you will know why David, the true king of Israel, was the first to make a name for himself by being the first to subdue the Edomites.

You will see the Edomite embodied in a single lad, and that being is a monster; his name is Esau. You will redeem him not by blows, as the historians tell you, for they tell you that he [i.e. David] slaughtered in one night 18,000 Edomites. No, he didn’t slaughter any 18,000 Edomites as individual units. He conquered the whole of Edom, while knowing the embodiment of all was Esau. And when he melted the whole of Esau, he was a man after God’s own heart. So, we are told: “I have found in David a man after my own heart, and he is mine forever, he is my son, I will go before him – I will be his father and he will be my son.” (Acts 13:24) And that one is being brought forth from the body; it is God’s only begotten, who becomes, in time, the father of that from which it emerged, in Christ Jesus. You are giving birth to Christ Jesus, that is, the father of David. And David will call him: “My father, my Lord, and the rock of my salvation” (Psalm 89). Every being in the world because of this conflict within himself is practically molding and shaping within himself Christ Jesus.

Paul tells us: (Gal. 4:19) “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” And when Christ is born in you, it is because he comes from a heart which is the heart of God; and so, “I have found in David a man after my own heart.” The whole vast world on the outside – that is Edom, that is Esau, and the victory belongs to Jacob. It is prophesied: “There are two nations within your womb, and two people born of you shall be divided – one shall be stronger than the other and the elder shall serve the younger.” This is the elder that comes first, so reason tells you it can’t be and your senses confirm what reason dictates. But the prophecy is the victory belongs to the younger, it belongs to Jacob, and Jacob is your ability, your skill in rearranging things so as to determine or predetermine an outcome. How would I feel tonight were I . . . and you name it. What would I see were it true, then see it; and how would I feel were it true, well then, feel it. What would I say to my friends were it true, then say it, not audibly for this means in the psychological meaning. You say it inwardly, so you talk to yourself inwardly as though you spoke outwardly. You carry on these mental conversations from premise of fulfilled desire, you talk to all you friends on these premises – and that is Jacob. But do it lovingly. The more you do it lovingly the nearer you are to meeting God in that successful resting message.

And so, one day it’s going to happen. When it happens you will say exactly what he said. (Genesis) “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.” Here I stood in the presence of God and I didn’t know it. This is the house of the Lord and I didn’t know it. So he takes the stone on which he slept that night to mark the place of the house of God and he calls it Bethel, the house of the Lord, the house of God. And in this dream who did he see? He saw the contact between infinity and finite man, for here a ladder rested on earth and stretched to the heavens and above it all stood God; and he saw on that ladder, ascending and descending, God. The Bible translates the word Elohim -“angel”. It is not angel, it is Elohim. It was God rising and descending, and above it all stood the Lord. The Lord said to him: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac.” If you read it as an historical document, Abraham was not his father, Isaac was his father. If you read it through the eyes of the spirit the voice is telling the truth: Abraham is the father of all above you. We all come out of Abraham. So, here I am the father – I, the Lord and God of Abraham, your father.

Now we go to the first verse of the book of Matthew, which is the book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, all coming out of Abraham. All the prophecies are made to him. Then comes the most complex thing of the battle within man. No special event, because he is the Edomite of Edomites; his name is Job. The conflict within him, and Jehovah spoke to him and said: “Why should a mere man sin?” and he asks three very important questions: “Do you know the period of gestation of the wild goat? Do you know the habits of the wild ass? Can you domesticate the wild ox?” You read that and you wonder what it is all about, and what beautiful imagery.

In my vision I saw Christ as the ox, as the wild ass, as the wild goat. Was not the wild goat the substitute for Isaac the sacrifice of the sin of the world? And he found the wild goat. Can you tell me the period of gestation of the wild goat? How long will it take Christ in man to really come to earth? Can you domesticate the wild ox? How long does it take you to take that wonderful imagination of yours and actually tame it? Everything denies it, so you go wild in your reactions and you still remain the wild ox. Can you domesticate the wild goat? Do you know the habits of the wild ass? Are we not told, a stupid man will get understanding when the wild ass’s colt is for a man? And did he not ride the ass in the most triumphant ride in the world into Jerusalem? He came riding on an ass. He couldn’t if it was still wild, it had to be controlled, it had to be domesticated, broken in. So he comes riding on that which he had tamed, his own wonderful human Imagination.

Take that Imagination of yours – which is God in man – and no matter what the appearance seems to be, what would you like it to be? Well then, see it as though it were. Believe me, imagining creates reality. All things are created by him. I tell you I have proved to my own satisfaction that imagining creates reality. Therefore, if I know it and live by it, I have found him, and I too can ride triumphantly on this domesticated wild, wild beast. You want to ride it, but normally, for the wild ass was given first to man; and so Christ in man was wild, but man didn’t know it and he starts with the state of consciousness called Jacob. I have told you the story – I hope you believed it. Every time you try it, even if you fail, Jacob is being exercised. But, may I tell you: obviously you cannot fail, because it is predestined.

Jacob cannot fail. A cue is given to us as to who he is when we see the one of the twelve sons he loved most. He loved Joseph most of all, for Joseph was the comfort of his old age. Joseph was born of the woman he wanted most, but in his conflict he had to marry Leah. Then, after he had served another seven years – seven for Leah – he was tricked. As he had tricked the father-in-law, the father-in-law tricked him. Then he had to serve another seven years, this time to get Rachael; and out of Rachel comes Joseph and his last, Benjamin. But Joseph was his love, the joy of his old age, and Joseph was a dreamer. Listen to the words: “Behold this dreamer cometh, let us sell him, let us kill him.” He could not only dream, he could interpret dreams, for this faculty in man that dreams is man’s imagination, and any interpreter of dreams is man’s imagination. “Behold the dreamer cometh, let us kill him.” Judah says: “No”, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites as the caravan moves on toward Egypt.” So they sold him, the dreamer. That is what everyone does in this world. But the dreamer rose to the heights of wealth and saved them in their famine. So, the dreamer in man will save him – that’s Joseph. But what a long trail in time between the moment when they sold the dreamer into slavery to the one called David – who brings out the darkness, who brings out the Edomite, and makes for himself a name of names in all of Israel. So God said of him: “I have found a man after my own heart.”

The day will come when you will prove every word I have told you tonight. You will meet these souls just as I have described them. You will meet the most radiant Being, and you know who she is. It doesn’t make sense, but these two are not detached from you. They are all in you, and at that moment in time, they seem to be external to you, but the umbilical cord has not been severed. You will see the only embodied enemies. Instead of spending any time to correct that mistake, right before your very eyes it melted, but it doesn’t vanish. All the enemies are there to be changed by you. And you know the words: “Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain.” In all my wanderings I thought it was lost, and yet nothing is lost – it was embodied in a monstrous thing. But then it came back; all that I had accused as enemy wasn’t gone or lost, it returned.

It caused me frightful suffering in the interval that it first began to form within me, and I gave my whole body and my life over to my senses, to passion based upon this garment that was hairy from head to feet. Then I began to work on something entirely different, a Jacob that was smooth of skin that no one can see. He was the supplanter. I heard about him, I began to seek him and it worked; and then one day I saw that he was not forever an invisible state. He became a concrete reality. I saw him, and what beauty! And I saw Esau, but redeemed Esau. Jacob does not need redeeming. It will not fail you, but these are the three states through which the immortal soul must pass. You are doing it now anyway.

Everything you said within yourself is being fulfilled. If you say: “I don’t believe it,” it’s perfectly all right, that’s your privilege, but that is father to anything you did to these two. They are struggling now within your womb. For long before they come out and you see them the struggle is on, because she asked the question: “Why is this so, why do I live if this fight is so within me?” Then the answer: he tells us: “There are two nations” and the war is on, and one will serve the other. He tells exactly which will do which – the elder will serve the younger. The one that comes first – Esau, the elder – and he serves the younger.

Who is he? What is Jacob’s name? The supplanter. He looks at the world and he doesn’t like it. Like that vision I had on Fifth Avenue. Looking at an empty lot I would say: “I remember when it was an empty lot.” It still is an empty lot to my outer senses, but I am not interested in my outer senses. I would build a word picture as I desired this lot to be. I would say: “I remember when it was an empty lot,” and still to outer appearances it is an empty lot, but not to me or to those who had that so-called dream. [June 15, 1962] That is exercising the inner man, exercising Jacob.

The day will come when God, and only God, knows. He sees the heart just as he wants it and you are wrestling all alone with yourself. Then one day, he sees the heart, and the heart is owned by one called David, “A man after my own heart.” Suddenly he sees David, and David is his only begotten son. David reveals to him who he is: God the father. Everyone will one day find David, a man after God’s own heart and then he will reveal to you the one you have been seeking through all eternity! You are God the Father.

Now let us go into the silence.

QUESTION PERIOD:
Q. What does it mean: “I beheld Satan falling like lightning from Heaven?

A. That is when the disciples returned, glorifying God and telling what marvelous things they had seen with the teachings to all kinds of people, casting out the unlovely things in people. Then he rejoiced when he heard of the great works being done by those whom he had taught and he said: “I beheld Heaven.” Well, Satan is really the state. Satan is only the embodiment of unbelief. He saw the entire thing fall, because here they could have done nothing unless they believed. “According to your belief be it done unto you. Your faith has made you whole.” So when the seventy returned filled with good news of what they had done through the teaching, he saw unbelief tumble from Heaven, for Heaven is within you. Therefore, it is always the state within you that dictates policy – what you will believe, what you will not believe. Then, in that Heavenly state, unbelief is cast out.

ESCHATOLOGY – THE DOCTRINE OF THE END

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 01-20-1969

Eschatology is the doctrine of the last days. It is the dramatic end of human history and the beginning of eternal salvation. When you, an individual arrive at that point in time, human history and the appearance of the Son or man (who is God) come together. This will happen in you after the tribulation of human experience, and of that day and hour only the Father in you knows.

Although God the Father appears to be another, He is your very Self, as His spirit is in you. Were this not so, you could not commune with Him or He with you. He tells us to: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth. Bring them all who are called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” You were created for God’s glory, His glory will not be given to another, therefore you must be the one who created you. This you will know when you experience eschatology. It comes at the end of human tribulation, when all of the parts have been played, therefore envy no one, the part they are paying, for you have either played it already or you will play it, for you cannot come to this dramatic end until you have played all of the parts, and of that day only the Father within you knows.

Eschatology was predicted and was fulfilled in vision. Always bear in mind that all of the stories recorded in scripture are visions. The Book of Isaiah begins: “This is the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos.” He tells you it is a vision and the sixty-six chapters do not deny it, modify it, or in any way contradict his words. We speak of the visions of Obadiah, the visions of Ezekiel, and are told that: “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.” These are all visions, not secular history at all.

In the 42nd chapter of Isaiah, we read: “Behold, the former things have come to pass and new I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.” A literal rendering of the first part of that verse could be: “The former things, behold they have come, but man will not believe the individual who experienced them.”

Jesus Christ is not a man. He has revealed himself in me and will reveal himself in all even though the world is looking for something entirely different. The visions of the prophets will unfold in individual man when he enters the state called Paul. And when you enter that state, your mystical experiences will reveal the end of your tribulation of human experience and your entry into the kingdom of God.

The entire eschatology of the Old Testament is the coming of Jehovah. He came, but – expecting a physical person to come from without, they would not believe him.

But Jehovah comes only to fulfill what He had predicted through his prophets, saying: “Behold the former things have come and are here now.” The former predictions of the prophets become your experiences of the one who fulfills scripture, for man fulfills the prophecy of himself in the last days.

God, prophesying what he would do through his prophets, entered into the limitation of and took upon himself the restriction of man. The power and wisdom to create emptied himself of all that was his and, taking upon himself the form of a slave, was born in the likeness of man. Spirit became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross of man. And when an individual man told the story of how the prophecies unfolded in him, no one would believe his story.

So today we still have that fundamental rock called Israel. Their calendar year is now approaching 6,000, because to them He has not come. It is only when eschatology comes to the individual does his BC turn into A.D. The Jew will date their letters as the year 1969 because it is part of the world of Caesar, but believing Jehovah has not yet come, in his faith, the Jew keeps alive the long passage of time. But Jehovah comes in an entirely different way. He inspired the prophets to record the visions the individual will experience, personally.

Now if God – being Spirit – is known in a vision, what must you do to experience Him? You must reenact the drama within yourself! The resurrection takes place within. The birth foretold to Abraham takes place within. The three who bear witness to the birth are not seen approaching, but suddenly appear within. And the story of the serpent in the wilderness is fulfilled within when you become the serpent and ascend into heaven as the Lord God Jehovah.

Who would have thought – I know I didn’t – that the story recorded in the 22nd and 53rd [chapters] of Isaiah would be experienced in one night? Remember: when the prophets recorded their visions they were written out, but not paragraphed or made into chapter form. In fact, they were not even punctuated and often one word flowed into the other. It is man who has taken the manuscript and given it punctuation, verses, paragraphs, and chapters.

In the 53rd [chapter] of Isaiah, the question is asked: “Who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” One night in vision I found myself in a room much like this one. I was seated on the floor facing twelve men, explaining the word of God when one quickly rose quickly and departed. As he left, I intuitively knew he was going to tell the authorities what he had heard. Then a tall, handsome man about 6’4″ tall, dressed in costly robes, entered. Because of his importance we all rose and stood at attention as he walked straight as an arrow to the end of the room, turned right, walked to the end, turned right again and came down the center to confront me. Taking a mallet and a wooden peg, he hammered the peg into my right shoulder. I felt every blow, yet it was not painful. Then he took a sharp instrument and with one quick, circular motion he severed my sleeve, tore it off and discarding it, he stretched out his arms forming the cross, embraced me, and kissed me on the right side of my neck as I – in turn – kissed him on the right side of his neck. And as the vision faded I saw the severed sleeve. It was a lovely shade of baby blue. His robe was costly, but mine was the priceless robe of light, light blue.

So now I know whom I have believed, for that night the arm of the Lord was revealed in me, and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah was fulfilled as well as the 22nd chapter of Isaiah. In this chapter we are told that he puts a peg into the shoulder of the one he has chosen, and on that peg all of the burdens of Israel are hung until the peg is broken. Then the utensils of the temple fall, for he has played his part.

Eschatology will never be understood as long as you look for someone on the outside to fulfill it. It an only be understood when you, personally experience it. Then you will tell your experiences to those who will listen, and some will believe you while others will disbelieve.

Eschatology is not the end of the world, as people believe. This past year a crowd left California and moved to Georgia and parts east, believing an earthquake would suddenly appear which would completely inundate us, and for the first time in recorded history, the east experienced an earthquake which shook twelve states.
What does it matter if an earthquake comes when there is no death? The individual who seems to die, in truth is restored to life in a 20-year old body to continue life in the environment best suited for the work still to be done in him. Cast in a role he has not yet played, he will continue life as we know it here, until he has played all of the tribulations of human experience. Then and only then will he arrive at eschatology – the day of the Lord – and only the Father knows when that day will appear.

I don’t care who you are – you are destined to experience eschatology, for it was God’s purpose to give himself to you and God is able to fulfill his purpose. He created you to radiate his glory and be the express image of his person.

You cannot stop God from fulfilling his purpose, but you will not arrive at that moment called eschatology until you have played all the parts – be they good, bad, or indifferent. So I say, envy no one. It doesn’t matter what they have done, are doing, or will do; do not envy or pity anyone, for you have either already played that part, or you will.

The Bible records every conceivable evil in the world that man could do to man and describes it openly. And you have played, or will play, every part before the last days come upon you, and in that day, events of scripture will unfold in you in a dramatic form imaginable. You will be possessed and find yourself the center of the entire Bible. As scripture reveals itself in you, you will discover from experience that you are the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you share your experience with others, they will question how a little nonentity who suffers and has nothing the world he would brag about could dare to make this bold assumption. They will think of you as blaspheming God, just as they accused him, claiming he blasphemed by stating, I and my Father are one, that when you see me you have seen the Father; that if you really knew me, you would know my Father also, but you know neither me nor my Father, for my Father is playing the part that I am.

And then one night in vision, I fulfilled the 42nd Psalm. That night, in vision I found myself leading an enormous crowd in gay procession to the house of God as a voice rang out: “And God walks with them.” A woman at my side asked the voice: “If God walks with us, where is he?” and the voice replied: “At your side.” Turning to her left she looked into my face and, laughing hysterically said, “What, Neville is God?” and the voice replied, “Yes, in the act of waking.” Then the voice spoke in the depths of my soul, saying: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and, knowing exactly what he was going to say, I became so excited I actually nailed myself upon this body in the same manner tradition tells us he was nailed upon the cross, but it was not a painful experience. Six vortices, each an ecstatic, joyful feeling, hold me here.

Now I know that no man took (or takes) my life, for I lay it down myself. I know I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again; for I, God the Father, deliberately took upon myself this limitation upon myself. When I heard the voice that night say: “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream,” I knew he was telling me that he was I and when the dream is over and he awakes I would be He, radiating His glory and bearing the express image of His person.

This is not for me alone, but for all. Listen to the words: “The glory that thou gavest me I would give to them that they may be one even as we are one.” I have told you of the glory that is now mine, thereby giving you the glory that we may be one. I in you and thou in me, that we may be made perfectly one. I have made God’s name known to you and I will make it known that the love by which I am loved may be in you. Not less love, but the same love, so that the whole may become one love!

In the end everyone will experience the whole Bible and tell it as I am telling it now. A few will believe but the majority will not. That’s all right, for all of the tribulations of human experience must be fulfilled, with no omissions. Today you may be one of the so-called beautiful people, possessing inherited wealth. You may be one of the ten best dressed women and spend a quarter of a million dollars on clothes to create the part you are playing. But tomorrow, even if you haven’t played it, you may play the part of a scrub woman, for every part must be played before you can arrive at eschatology.

Having played every part as recorded in scripture, when I aw a man betray me I knew I had played the part of the betrayer, for I have fulfilled scripture.

Everyone must play it all, if not on this stage, then on another, for when you leave this set on the stage of life, although you are no longer seen by the audience here, you are not dead, but have entered another stage in the great theater called life, to continue the work that is still to be done in you, until all of the parts in the play have been played.

Eschatology is not the end of the earth, but the end of human history and the beginning of eternal salvation. It is the abrupt cleavage between this world and the transcendental world of God. It is your entrance into an entirely different world where you radiate God’s glory which you create by your very being, for you are now the Father. God the Father created you to radiate his glory and bear the express image of His person in that world. I cannot describe it because there are no images on earth to aid me. Life there is entirely different from this one, for there you are not some little pygmy, but God Himself, completely equipped to do it all!

So if you condemn someone, the chances are you have not played the part he is playing, but will play it tomorrow, for condemnation simply moves you closer to the fulfillment of what you have condemned. Let no one judge you and don’t judge another, for you know too much now. It is my hope you have played all the parts and that tonight your eschatology will come. Sacred history has been brought to its climax, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ in you is the one who does it.

Addressing God as, “O righteous Father”, he [John] said: “I in them and thou in me.” Now, if God the Father is in me, and I am in you, is He not in you also? Yes, God the Father is in you and Christ, his God’s creative power, is in you as the pattern man who must fulfill scripture. The plan was made for, and erupts in Christ – the Christ in you. He is your hope of glory, for you are the one spoken of as Abraham.

In the state called Abraham the promise was made that you would have a child. So what part are you playing then the child appears? Abraham looked up to see three men standing before him. He thought they were messengers of the Lord for he did not realize he was the Lord himself. It is said he did not see them approaching they came so suddenly. And when the prophecy is fulfilled your attention is diverted for a few seconds by an unearthly wind, and when you look back those that you did not see approaching are sitting where your body was, for your body is now gone. The body has been removed because you only wore it for a little while, but while you wore it something happened in you.

Now a lady wrote this past week, saying: “In my dream I was shoveling dirt. Although it seemed as though I was digging in the earth, I knew I was digging in my own brain.” That’s a lovely vision and a true one. Everything takes place in the brain – the earth, for man is made up of the dust of the earth, so her vision was perfect. She was digging in her own brain. For she is on the verge, although I cannot tell her the day or the hour, for only the Father in her knows.

If you will read the Book of John – which differs somewhat from the synoptics, you will discover that John pinpoints the day the vision will occur, stating that the birth, followed by the resurrection, will take place between 6:00 P.M. on Sunday and 6:00 P.M. on Monday. That is when it happened in me. I went to bed on Sunday evening about 11:00 P.M. and awoke, was born from above, and resurrected at 4:00 A.M. on Monday morning. You will follow the same pattern. Having entered the world before the coming of Jehovah, you entered the world from B.C. and when it happens your world turns into the year of the Lord, A.D.

The Old Testament is crowded with eschatology – the coming of Jehovah. He came but was not recognized because it was not what people expected. But He is coming in your world and you are going to fulfill scripture. When you realize you are the central character of the Bible, you are going to feel so wonderful. I cannot tell you the thrill that is in store for you when you experience everything written there. Even though it has happened to others, scripture is all about you, because in the end there is no other. In that day, you will know that I dwell in them and thou in me, and we, all gathered together are perfect in that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

You will not have a different son from the speaker. We have the same son. When I tell this to priests, rabbis and ministers, they throw up their hands in holy horror and claim I have taken all of their religion from them. What they have been taught is true on a certain level of awareness, but I am speaking from experience. I have experienced scripture. I know it is true, but it is not what the world teaches.

Jesus Christ is God the Father and Jesus Christ is in you. One day you will find out that you are God the father and because you are you will produce a son to bear witness to that fact. Now no one knows who God the Father is, except his son who comes into your world to reveal you to yourself. And when he appears you don’t have to ask him who he is; the minute you see him you know exactly who he is and he knows who you are. There is no uncertainty as to this relationship. To know that you are God the Father, yet while you remain here in the world of Caesar you will continue to wear the little garment that suffers, as all garments do. But after you have experienced eschatology and leave this little garment behind, you will no longer be restored to life, for you will have come to the end of human history.

In the Book of Acts it is said that Paul remained at home, talking from morning to night about the word of God and the kingdom of heaven. It does not say how Paul departed, in spite of tradition where they claim he was a martyr. Paul was not murdered. The word “martyr” means “witness”. He was a witness, yes, a witness to the truth of God’s word, for the word is true, and someone had to witness it.

So when it happens to you, you will tell it. You may not speak from the platform, as I do, but you will tell it. You can’t restrain the impulse as we are told in Jeremiah: “If I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire and I am tired of holding it in and I cannot.” It’s simply something within you and you cannot stop telling your story. You will be compelled to make known unto them God’s name and the love by which you are loved, that that same love may be in them.

Now, Jesus Christ does not stand before himself and call himself Father. God’s only begotten son, David, stands before Jesus Christ in you, and calls you father as he called me Father. Then you will know we are the same Jesus Christ.

I can say to every one of you: you are going to have this experience and know from experience who you really are. There are not a lot of Jesus Christ’s running around, there is only God the Father. If I am the father of God’s only begotten Son as told me in the 2nd Psalm and you have the same experience, then you and I are the same Father. And if the whole world has the same experience – and they will – then we are the one God and Father of all, are we not? So John’s prayer is that all will become one as he has become one Father. And he speaks of the glory recorded in Isaiah, saying: “The glory thou gavest me, I have given them.” God didn’t keep a little glory for himself and share the rest. It’s the same glory, because there cannot be another. So in the end there is only one God, only one Lord, only one Father, and only one Son and you will be the Father of that son, as I know I am the Father of that one and only son.

This is eschatology – the arrival of the end of the tribulation of human experience and the beginning of eternal salvation. And, although you may not remember, you had to have played every part in this world to arrive at the fulfillment of scripture. The blind man, the deaf man, the poor man, the rich man, the beggar, the thief, the murderer, the betrayer, the betrayed – you name it and scripture has mentioned it. , You can’t name one vile or evil state that is not described openly in scripture. And you have played them all, or you will.

I think you who come here have played them all or you would not be this constant. You would find something far more interesting tonight, raining as it is, than to be here. So in the not distant future you will be fulfilling scripture and experiencing the thrill of the events s they happen. Today we watched the inauguration of a new president. It was a marvelous production, but it pales into insignificance compared to the dramatic quality that possesses you when scripture unfolds within you.

Can you imagine waking and coming out of your skull as one coming out of a womb? Then five months later finding your son who calls you Father? These two different events are recorded in the 9th chapter of Isaiah as: “To us a child is born; to us a son is given.” The child appears to bear witness to your birth, and the son is given to witness your Fatherhood. You may think the child and the son are the same, but they are not. They signify two dramatic events within you. I am sure our new president felt thrilled to be sworn in by our chief justice, but the thrill you will experience when scripture unfolds within you is far greater, for these experiences belong to the transcendental world of God, and not to this mortal world of history.

Can you imagine the thrill that possesses you when, like a fiery serpent, you ascend into heaven and it reverberates like thunder? Having played that part of one in generation, you are regenerated and all that you have ever done is forgiven.

I have shared my visions of the last days with you. They will come, but only after you have experienced all the trials and tribulations of human experience. Don’t try to remember them for God, in his infinite mercy has hidden the memory from you for a purpose and in the end it is all washed away anyway. “Though your sins are as scarlet they shall be as white as snow,” so it really doesn’t matter. But I urge you to condemn no one, for you have played the part he (or she) is now playing or you will play it.

It’s a horrible play, but in the end when eschatology unfolds within you, you will understand the meaning behind it all.

Now let us go into the silence.

ETERNAL STATES

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 09-09-1968

Sit quietly and ask yourself who you are, where you are and what you are. Your answers will reveal your state of consciousness: your body of belief. Paul said, “We do not look to the outer things, but to the things unseen, for the outer things are transient, but the unseen things are eternal.” Your beliefs, seen by the mystic, are personified. They form a state, which completely controls your behavior. Any modification within your body of belief will result in a change in your outer world.

Blake tells us, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation which was an act of mercy. By this you will see that I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it leaves paradise following the serpent.”

Now, Blake uses the word “mercy” only as one who sees that states are eternal; that in God’s mercy he created all things, not just a few, so that any situation which can be conceived, already exists in eternity. When Blake said, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation which was an act of mercy,” he meant that everything you see is dead, a part of the eternal structure of the universe. You are its operant power. When you enter a scene it becomes animated. Then you become lost in your own animation and think it is independent of your perception. Looking at it, you cannot believe you are causing the animation, but you are.

You and I are living souls, buried in a world of death. We are destined to be life-giving spirits through an act of mercy, but until that time we animate what we perceive. Questioning self, Blake asks: “O miserable man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” May I tell you, no earthly power can do it, only God.

Peter tells us, “Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” This is true, for only by God’s act of great mercy can we be born anew. Now buried in a world of eternal death, you are animating dead forms, believing they are independent of your perception of them. This you will continue to do until God’s great mercy awakens Jesus Christ within you. If Christ was not buried in you, he could not awaken in you, and if he is not in you he could not emerge from you. Therefore, like Paul, you carry in your body the death of Jesus. It is the tomb in which he is buried. His awakening delivers you from a body of death, but until that time you must live in, and adjust to, the dead body you wear.

Now, until you are born from above, you operate the power which gives life to this world. For the world is a dream filled with dead scenery, while you are Proteus. As you enter the scene you cause the parts to be made alive. Not knowing this, you think there are others, and fight the shadows of your own being.

All things exist in the human imagination, and all phenomena are solely produced by imagining. Where there is no imagining, everything vanishes. If lack is now in your world, and you cease to be aware of it by imagining plenty, lack disappears; therefore, any modification in your body of belief will cause a change in your life.

Now embedded in death, we resurrect into life by the act of mercy. Scripture calls this transformation Jesus Christ, for it is he who is buried in us; and when he awakens and rises, we are born from above, thereby setting us free from this body of death. Until that moment in time you can enter a state, partake of it and move on to another. This is how it is done. Although I am living here in Los Angeles, I desire to be in New York City. While lying on my bed tonight, I close my physical eyes to the room surrounding me and assume I am in New York City. Then I ask myself these questions: lf I were now in New York City, what would I see? Would I think of Los Angeles as three thousand miles to the west of me? Where are my friends and loved ones? How are my finances now that I am here? Then I would answer these questions carefully and fall asleep in New York City.

Now, an assumption is an act of faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that things seen were made out of things that do not appear.” Someone looking at my physical body would see me sleeping in Los Angeles, yet I would be sleeping in New York City, for I am all imagination and must be where I am imagining myself to be. By this action I am adjusting myself imaginatively to a state I desire to objectively realize. And if I have imagined with conviction, by giving New York City all of the sensory vividness of reality, things will immediately begin to happen to compel me to make the journey. I do not imagine lightly anymore, because I now know every imaginal act will come to pass.

When I first stumbled upon this principle, I thought it was stupid. The idea that imagining creates reality was nonsense. How could anyone believe a thing into being without any external evidence to support it? How could any imaginal act be the causative fact, which fuses and projects itself? Although I did not believe it could, I imagined, and got that which I did not want! So I acquaint you now with what I know about this principle of imagining and lead you to your choice and its risk. There is always a risk, for you may not want what you have imagined after you get it, so I warn you to select wisely.

Do you know what you want from life? You can be anything you want to be if you know who you are. Start from the premise, “I am all imagination and pass through states,” for eternity (all things) exist now! Having experienced a state and moved into another one you may think the former state has ceased to be, but all states are eternal, they remain forever. Like the mental traveler that you are, you pass through states either wittingly or unwittingly, but your individual identity is forever. Whether you are rich or poor, you retain the same individual identity when you move from one state into another. If you are not on guard, you can be persuaded by the press, television, or radio, to change your concept of self and unwittingly move into an undesirable state. You can move into many states and play many parts, but as the actor, you do not change your identity. When you are rich, you are the same actor as when you are poor. These are only different parts you are playing.

You annexed your physical body for the experiences you are now having, but you are not the body you wear. The day will come when you will awaken to this fact. Then, like Proteus, you will assume any shape for the part you want to play. If it takes a fish, you will be a fish. If it takes a man, you will be a man, for that is who God is. Learn to adjust your senses to what you desire to be. Just as I moved to New York City, you can move into the state of wealth, fame, or any state you desire. Determine what it would feel like, and adjust your thinking by assuming you are feeling it now.

Look at your world mentally. Your present level of objective fact may be the same as it was before, but in your imagination hear your friends congratulate you on your good fortune. Then believe in the reality of this unseen experience. Like Paul, look not to things seen, but to things unseen; for the things seen are temporal, while the things unseen are eternal. Two hundred years ago Blake made the statement, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy.” Three thousand years ago the unknown writer of Ecclesiastes said it even more beautifully: “There is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing for which it is said, ‘This is new?’ It has been already in ages past, but there is no remembrance of things to come after, among those who will come later.”

This past year one of our great physicists, Professor Richard Feynman of Cal Tech, said the same thing, yet not as beautifully as Blake or the unknown author of Ecclesiastes. This is what Professor Feynman said: “The entire space/time history of the world is laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.” For this Professor Feynman received the Nobel Prize and maybe $50,000, while Blake, who saw it mystically and recorded it poetically, went to an unmarked pauper’s grave. Professor Feynman based his conclusion on his study of the disintegration of the atom. Noticing the peculiar behavior of a little positron when placed in fluid, he realized that the entire space/ time history of the world is already laid out, and man only becomes aware of portions of it successively.

I have seen the same thing in vision and know that the world is dead. I have entered a room such as this, to discover that I am the spirit animating it. By arresting the activity in me that caused the scene to become alive, everything froze. The waitress walked not. The birds flew not. The diners dined not. Then I knew that when I released its activity in me, everything and everyone would continue to complete their intention. Releasing my power, the waitress completed the serving, the bird flew to the limb of the tree, and the grass began to wave, as the leaf which was arrested in space fell to the ground. Now I know I am the center of creative power. The day will come when you, too will awaken and exercise your creative power, knowingly. That is our destiny, for we all will awaken as God and use this power to create in the true sense of the word.

Try to remember that there is no limit to God’s creative power, or your power of belief. Persuade yourself that things are as you desire them to be. Fall asleep in that assumption, as that is your act of faith. Tomorrow the world will begin to change, to make room for the garment of your assumption. If it takes one person or ten thousand to aid the birth of your assumption, they will come. You will not need their consent or permission, because the world is dead and what would be the purpose in asking dead people to help you? Simply know what you want, animate the scene and those playing their parts will begin to move towards the fulfillment of your desire.

Try it before you pass judgment upon it. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it will prove itself in performance and then it will not matter what the world thinks. If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what someone else thinks about it? I encourage you to try it, for if you do you will not fail.

Now let us go into the silence.

ETERNITY WITHIN

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-4-1966

Tonight’s subject is a mystery to be known only by revelation. It is a secret that has been kept hidden from the beginning of time. Where there is no mystery, where there is no end from the beginning there is no challenge, no place for imagination or any room for faith or hope.

But when it pleased God, in the fullness of time, to make it known to his apostles, those whom he called and incorporated into his own Risen body, they are sent to tell the story of the gospel of God.
The subject I have chosen for tonight is taken from the book of Ecclesiastes. I have so many commentaries on this book at home, so many written interpretations by our Biblical scholars and they are so widely separated in their opinions, yet without this, the most disputed verse in the entire book, that I have chosen tonight, everyone in this world should despair.

The book starts with the statement, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun.” Which, by the way, modern science has confirmed. They are now telling us that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively. “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’ it has been already in ages past, but there is no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be any remembrance of things to come later among those who will come after.” Then he takes all of the opposites in the world saying “There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to laugh and a time to cry; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” He goes through all the opposites that you and I pass through, one after the other. A few of them are obvious. Certainly we are born and we die, and what man hasn’t laughed and what man hasn’t cried, so we can see all these parts.

But there is one little verse in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes that is the most disputed of the entire book. Here is the verse. “He has made everything perfect in its time. He has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” The interpretation of this verse is determined by the meaning that the scholar gives to the word “eternity”. I haven’t read one interpretation where they went deep enough. The word is translated “eternity” in the Revised Standard Version, which I have quoted. It is translated as “the world” in the King James Version, but if you go back to the root of the word “olam” you will discover it means “a lad; a young man, a stripling, a youth.” This makes no sense to the average person and the scholar would ignore it completely.

You could come to the conclusion that all things are in the human imagination and that the imagination is capable of containing the imagining of space. Your dreams reveal that to you, for when you awake where did they happen? I have seen the stars, the moon and the sun in my dreams. The modern wise men would tell me it was just a dream and all in my imagination, but I have seen people just as clear as I am seeing you now and we converse all in my imagination, so I will go along with the modern wise men in that respect. But when I awake and things seem to be objective and independent of my imagination, was the other unreal? Not according to the book of Ecclesiastes. It is telling you that everything is in your imagination, that your imagination is forever manifesting itself in the imaginations of men.

This I do know. By simply assuming I am the man I would like to be and mentally acting in harmony with my assumption, I have aided the birth of my desires and brought them to pass. I have played the game of assumption time and time again and it has never failed me. When someone asks something of me I simply assume they have what they want, then whatever needs to take place in this world will take place and bring it to pass, but where did the desires’ fulfillment originate but in my imagination? But if there is no escape from a world of recurrence, what would it matter if you could perform miracles, be worshiped by all and possess the world if, in the end you would say, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.

But Koheleth, the preacher, meant something far deeper than that. It is marvelous to know that the whole drama of life is taking place in your imagination. That you have the choice of life and death, good and evil, blessings and cursings; that you can by assumption have a rich and wonderful life where everything is a blessing. But, if in the end when you close your eyes for the last time you realize it was all vanity, would you not question what did it matter? That is what Koheleth is summing up. He is telling us that there is something greater and to wait for the fullness of time. When? No one knows, not even the Son, only the Father. But in the fullness of time that which was placed in the mind of man will be revealed.
Now let me repeat it. “He put eternity into man’s mind yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” That which God put into the mind of man is a lad, an eternal youth who is his only begotten Son. Now let me unfold it for you, for I speak from experience. I am not theorizing or speculating. I am telling you what I know from experience. And the truth that one knows from experience, he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or that he can know that same truth in any other way. I share with you, this night, the truth that I know from experience. One day you will experience it, but tonight you will hear it through the secondary revelation of the ear, for I will tell you what I have experienced concerning this wonderful eleventh verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes.

Here is the story. God has put his only begotten son into your mind, for it is God’s purpose to give you himself. You will never know in eternity that God accomplished his purpose unless God’s Son sees him and calls him Father. And when God’s only begotten Son calls you Father there will be no uncertainty. The revelation is so altogether knowing, that when he appears there will be no doubt in your mind as to the relationship.

Now let me go back and unravel this great mystery. I say God’s Son is David. The word “olam” first appears in the book of Samuel. A promise is made by the king that the father of anyone who destroys the enemy of Israel will be set free. Not the man, but his father. When David returned from the slaughter of the Philistines with the head of the giant in his hand, the king, remembering his promise, tried to find out who the father was. The king turned to his commander and said, “Whose son is this youth?” When he didn’t know the king said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.” No one knows, so the king turned to David and said, “Whose son are you, young man?” Then David answered, “I am the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite.”

The word “Jesse” is connected to the verb “to be”. In other words David is saying, “I am the son of him whose name is I AM.” I am the son of the Lord, as told in the 2nd Psalm. “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’” The divine sonship of David is the only one of its kind and totally supernatural. He is looking into the eyes of his father, and his father is God. We are told that Jesus is the Son, but I tell you that Jesus is God the Father. When the question was asked, “What think ye of the Christ, whose Son is he?” they answered, “The Son of David.” Then, said he, “Why then did David, in the Spirit, call me ‘Lord’? which means, my father. If David calls him ‘Lord’ how can he be David’s Son?” Because the Son of God was placed in the mind of Man.

Now let us go to scripture to find the spot where David was buried, and where the Lord was buried. In the 2nd chapter of I Kings we are told, “David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David.” The 3rd chapter of Nehemiah tells us the place saying, “He was buried after the stairs that went down from the City of David to the Fountain Gate, the reservoir below the place of the living Budah.” So David was buried after the stairs, at the top, in the City of David.

Now we are told that when Jesus was crucified (it being the Jews preparation for the Passover) they took him down and placed him in an empty tomb not yet occupied by man. Where? In the City of David. Scripture tells us there are many sepulchers in David’s city, but that he is buried at the top of the watershaft, which goes down to the great reservoir of Living Waters. Even today men are excavating all of North Africa trying to find that area, but they will never in eternity find it there, for David’s burial place is in the shell you wear. Sleeping with his fathers, David is buried in the City of David at the top of the stairs that leads down to the Living Waters in you.

You may not know it, but in spite of your sex you are the Father of David. I know, from experience, that I am David’s Father. David sleeps with his fathers – not forefathers – and is buried in the same city where his Father, the Lord is buried. I tell you, you are the Father. You are that Lord called Jesus who is buried in the City of David and when the fullness of time comes you will rise and as you do you will bring forth a new creation to be born from above. “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Well, Jesus Christ is buried in you as you are told in the 2nd letter of Paul’s to the Corinthians. “We all carry in the body the death of Jesus that we may manifest in our body the life of Jesus.” You carry his death in your body in the hope that you will manifest his life in your body, and when he rises in you, you are He. How do you know that Jesus died for you? How do you know that when He rises you are He? Through the revelation of His Son who rises in you and calls you Father, for when he calls you Father you will know who you are.

David is buried with his fathers, for no one has ever seen the face of God but the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. You can’t see the face of God, but His Son can, so it is the Son who reveals you as the Father. We are told in the 13th chapter of Mark, “If any man ever tells you, ‘Look, there is the Christ’, or ‘Look, here he is’ do not believe him.” Don’t believe him. “For it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.” Identical! Well, how will you know that you are he? When his Son calls you Father. David sleeps with his fathers, for all of us are the Elohim. Although the word Elohim is plural it is translated both in the singular and the plural. David has called me Father and one day he will call you Father. He will call everyone Father and then all will be united into the one God.

“I have manifested thy name to those whom thou has given me. I in them and thou in me that they may become perfectly one.” I have told you what has been given me by revelation. It may not make sense but you cannot expect this greatest of all mysteries to make sense, for it takes place in a region so remote from the place the intellect inhabits that you cannot explain it to the intellect. No scholar understands it. The lowest one of the orders found in scripture is the eighth order, the order of the brilliant minds of the world. It is said that the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God. That it takes the foolishness of God and the weakness of God to confound the wise. The wise can analyze it, but scripture cannot be understood until it is revealed.

I wouldn’t have the slightest concept of what that verse meant were it not revealed to me and I actually experienced it. If you read the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes, and confine the reading to vanity, you would go out and do anything under the sun to enjoy the little happiness that you could, for in the end it would all be gone if it were not for that one little verse. For the entire book tells you, “The wise and the stupid they die and become dust. Everything is dust, vanity of vanities. All is vanity.” But what I am trying to tell you tonight is so altogether profound. So go home knowing that, although you seem to make an exit from this world, you don’t really die, that you are an immortal being and buried in you is David, God’s immortal, eternal Son.

Do you know who David really is? He is not a boy, born a thousand years B.C. No. In Hebrew thought everything consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole, and concentrated time into which all generations are fused and from which they spring, is called eternity. Eternity is personified as a youth – the eternal youth. When man has passed through all the generations of men (not avoiding one experience) and can say, “Forgive them for they know not what they do as they are passing through states” then the sum total, the quiescence of all the experience of being man rises from sleep and calls you Father.

Yes, I have been blind; I have been deaf; I have been dumb. I have been everything man can ever conceive of. I have been imprisoned, embarrassed, everything in the world. Not in this little section of time, but in my journey. I have played every part under the sun. I have seen it. One night I gave a banquet to all the parts I have played. That’s Messiah’s banquet. Having sent all into the world, Messiah invited the high and the mighty, but they gave excuses and did not come. Then he told his servant to go into the highways and byways and bring all. And they brought the lame and the blind, the halt and the withered. This night I was lifted up on high and found myself in the human form divine. I was a radiant, glowing light. I didn’t burn; it was just a glow that illuminated everything that I had been. I did not need the stars; I did not need the moon; I was the light. And as far as my eye could see was an infinite sea of human imperfection – all the parts that I have played. I knew they were waiting for me, yet as I glided by I didn’t lift a finger to make one of them better than they seemed, but as I passed by eyes that were missing were replaced in the empty sockets, missing arms and limbs became perfect. Not one had a blemish in the end. And as I reached the end the grand choral group sang out, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen” and when I reached the end they all exalted, “It is finished” and I came back into this little garment I wear.

That night I was called by my personal name, as you are told in scripture, “I will call the entire host by name and not one is missing.” You have a name, and you will be called by name in the final day and not one will be missing. They called me by the only name that I am known by. I have a sir–name, but when I was only three weeks old my mother heard the voice say, “Call him Neville”. Then it was confirmed 15 minutes later when my uncle spoke to her and said, “Call him Neville,” although the name was never used before in our family. And we read in the 41st chapter of Genesis, “If it is repeated, then it shall shortly come to pass.”

I gave them what they wanted more than anything in this world, that night. They wanted restoration from my fall. I, as God fell, for there is nothing but God. And I took that innocent perfection into the world of experience and played all the parts. Then I was lifted up and found them waiting for their redemption. And as I walked by, everyone was made perfect, for “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Everyone was made perfect, for I fell and took them with me, then I was lifted up and redeemed them all. That was Messiah’s banquet.

Everyone has fallen in the same way. You may not know it, but when you see someone that is blind remember what you are told in the ninth chapter of John. The question was asked, “Tell me master, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” and the answer came, “Neither this man nor his parents, but that the works of the Lord be made manifest.” It was the Lord who fell and it is the Lord who will rise. That Lord is in you and his name, in scripture, is Jesus Christ. That is Jehovah. But man does not understand it, for he is completely confused with all the nonsense that goes on in the world. A couple of days ago I read that the present pope made the statement that he cannot allow things to get out of hand. He said, “The Roman pontifex” meaning all the pontifices from the beginning of their so–called reign “are the custodians and interpreters of divine revelation.”

Several years before, this same pope made the statement on Passion Sunday, that the Jews crucified Jesus because they did not know who he was. And he is the custodian of the revelation of God? Why, he hasn’t the slightest beginning of knowledge concerning Christ. I mean that as one who has experienced Christ. I speak in the same way Paul spoke to the Sanhedrin. They thought they were the interpreters, the great protectors of divine revelation and they didn’t know what they were talking about. No Jew or group of Jews killed God. Listen to the words from the 10th chapter of the gospel of John, “No one takes my life; I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.” How are you going to get around that bold statement when every word of scripture is true?

No one takes your life, you lay it down yourself. By an act of self–limitation you achieve your purpose of expansion. You couldn’t expand beyond what you were, had you not by your own decision, limited yourself and falling, you took with you the one man broken into multiple parts and you will play all the parts under the sun. The thief, the victim, the murdered, and the murderer, but everything under the sun, so in the end you can say, “No matter who you are, you are forgiven, for at the present moment you know not who you are or what you do.” Then you will be raised up on high by a power within yourself and prepare Messiah’s banquet, for all the parts that fell with you and when you glide by everyone will be made perfect. Why? Because you are perfect. As you glide by, everyone is molded into the beautiful form they knew in the state of innocence, before you fell taking them with you into the state of experience. You fell into the state of experience and return to the state of imagination. That’s the crown.

“God put eternity into the mind of man so that man could not find out what god has done from the beginning to the end.” I have revealed it to you, tonight, through the lesser revelation of hearing. Like Job, you have heard with the hearing of the ear. Job couldn’t understand how God could be a god of love when all the terrible things happened to him, but in the end Job realized he was the one who had caused it all. And, when you have played all the parts, like Job you will awaken and say, “Now my eyes see thee.”

The churches, today, speak of Jesus as suffering for your sins. Don’t for one moment believe it. Everyone carries within himself his own proof. If you miss the mark you don’t get the prize. You hit the mark and you get the prize. No suffering for sins. Suffering is simply a disciplinary action, which is nothing more than God’s love in you. There is not a God on the outside. We are told in Proverbs, “Just as a father would correct his son, so the Lord chastens him whom he loves.” Loving the part you play, he chastens and corrects it as he moves from state to state to state.

So Ecclesiastes is right. I am born and I die, I have known poverty and I have known wealth, I have known disgrace and I have known grace. There has been a time in my life when I would have gone along with Koheleth and said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” but the last round came for me and I am about to depart this world of sin and death (and it is not long delayed I assure you), for the whole has been revealed.

Only in the end, when you are about to make your exit from Egypt (the world of states) is it actually revealed. If you are called to tell it, you will, and there will be those who hear it and believe and those who hear it and reject it. It is entirely up to the individual who hears the testimony. I tell you what I know from experience and you may believe it or you may reject it. It’s entirely up to you, but you will experience all that I have told you this night.

David, one day, having slept with his fathers (plural) will awaken in you. And you, being the Father, will awaken and rise from Golgotha, your skull, for the place where they laid him and the place where he rose was in the City of David. David’s burial place, as told us in the third chapter of Nehemiah, is after the stairs that go down from the City of David to the Fountain Head. Exploding within, you rise from the sepulcher where Jesus Christ is buried. Five months later David explodes within you and you cry, “I have found David, he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’” The relationship is so well known that it is prophetic.

Then four months later you see the shaft and the Fountain Gate of Living Water where you laid down in the City of David. Merging with it up you go into eternity and your journey is over. Then you linger for a little while to tell it. Two months ago no insurance company would have given me one week to live, but I have to linger to tell it. The drama is over for me, but it has to be told. There are ears yet to hear it, so I came back and am as strong today as I was 25 years ago. I am the same young man I was 25 years ago in spite of my 61 years. I can do the things, physically, I haven’t done in the longest while, but I may go this night. It makes no difference now. I came back to tell those who had to hear it, whether they accept it or reject it, as told us in the last chapter of Acts, “He expounded to them from morning till evening, trying to convince them of the kingdom of God and telling them about Jesus Christ, using for his argument the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms. And some were convinced by what he said while others disbelieved.”

This is the story of everyone to whom the risen God appears. All the fathers are coming back now and you are the Father. We are the fathers with whom David sleeps. You are his Father and know it only from what I have told you, but the day is coming when you will know if from experience. And if you are David’s Father and I know I am his Father, are we not one? Can we not say the words in the 17th [chapter] of John, “I in them and thou in me that they may become perfectly one”?

The Old Testament ends on this note, “A son honors his father. If I am a father, where is my honor?” In other words, where is my son? So the Old Testament ends on a hope, for the son has not yet appeared to honor his father, but as the New Testament begins the son appears.

Tonight I have told you who you really are, and although it is all vanity, you can be anything you want to be, generically. You can be a sinner or a saint, for you are passing through a fabulous world of opposites and as Blake said, “I do not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone of them in states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in his deadly dream of good and evil when he left paradise following the serpent.”

So until the end we are asleep, dreaming strange dreams. We dream we are in prison and we dream that we are free. We dream we have money and we dream we are poor, and whatever we identify ourselves with, we externalize. So I can’t deny the preacher’s statement, but that one verse gives the hope, for without that verse what would it matter tonight if there was no hope, no nothing. The intellectual mind cannot understand what God put in the mind of man, but I have told you what it is. You will never know that you are Jesus until his Son explodes within you and calls you Father. Then by implication you know who you are. It’s still the same name. The self that is raised and the self that is called Father does not differ from the self that you were before, only now you include a far greater self who is none other than God the Father.

Now let us go into the silence.

Question: When we die here where do we go?

Answer: This seems the height of vanity based upon what we know about our biologically human body, and what our scientists tell us about it, but you dreamed yourself into being, and the dreamer cannot be destroyed by his dream. You may dream the most horrible dream in the world, you may dream of dying, but you can’t be destroyed by your dream. As you dreamed yourself into being here, you will dream yourself into being there. My mother was only 61 when she left here, but she looked 90 because she had suffered so for two years and her lovely form had withered before our eyes. I have seen her at the age of twenty, radiantly beautiful. I remained my age but she looked much, much younger, but the relationship of mother/son was still there. My father died at the age of 85. I have seen him several times since and he has never been over 50. You see, we are dreaming. You will find yourself not only in a world just as real as this, but the world may not be in the year 1966, as this present time is, it may be the year 3002 and it will be just as natural and normal to you as this year of 1966 is. No loss of identity, you will find yourself in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in you.

Good night.

EVERY NATURAL EFFECT

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

Class Lecture by Neville

Edited by Jan McKee

Every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion of the perishing, vegetable memory.

We do not remember these moments in time when we imagined certain states. So when that imaginal state takes form so we can see it with the outer eye, we do not recognize our own harvest and deny that we had anything to do with these natural effects that are taking place in our world. Because our memory is faulty, we do not remember.

“There is a moment in every day,” said Blake, “that Satan cannot find, nor can his watch fiends find it. But the industrious find this moment and it multiply and when it once is found, it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.” Now, by the word “Satan,” he simply means doubt. Doubt cannot find it. I desire a certain state in this world. Reason tells me it’s difficult; my friends tell me it’s impossible; and so if I doubt that I could ever realize it, that’s the voice of Satan speaking to me. He’s always challenging God. God is my own wonderful human imagination.

That’s God. So the protagonists are God and Satan — simply faith and doubt. Can I imagine that I am the one that I would like to be and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true. If I can and remember that assumption and when I did it, then I will see when it happens in my world the relationship between the natural effect and its spiritual cause. The spiritual cause was that moment of assumption.

Now let me share with you what was given to me this past week in the form of a letter. He’s here tonight. His barber was the low man on the totem pole when he first encountered him. There were four in the shop. Well he was the fourth man. If you’re familiar with the barbershop, and maybe you ladies do not know, and so the boss always has the first chair; and so if it’s a slow day, he gets the man. By the time he’s through, he gets the second one.

He doesn’t share it. If three should come in, then they go to the different chairs. Well, four chairs, the fourth one waits for his customer. Well, this friend of mine one day happened to sit in his chair. And he liked the way he cut his hair and gathered from what he said that he liked cutting hair. He was proud of his profession as a barber, proud of it — not making excuses as so many barbers do. He was proud to be a barber and wanted to be the very best barber and win competitions. So having heard this man express this desire, my friend imagined that he was tops.

Well, in a little while he bought out the boss barber and then dismissed him and rearranged his staff and then from then on began to proceed to the top. Well, three weeks ago, while sitting in his chair, which is his now — the boss barber is his barber for he was the low man but now he’s the top man. He said to him, and in a very exciting way, that there was a contest to be held in San Francisco. And he would like to enter this contest for hair styling and cutting of hair. Well, my friend said when “I discovered that he really wanted it, and no one goes into a contest unless he wants to win, I saw on the wall the trophy that would be his. And I heard him tell me how he won.” Well, there were four men in the shop. One was committed for that weekend and so, this past weekend, he took two with him. So there were three from that shop of four men.

There were only nine trophies given in the State in this competition and that one little shop won four. The boss barber won first prize and a second prize, and his two men that went with him each won a second. So they came back from San Francisco bearing four out of nine. Now he said to me, you’ve often said from the platform, “I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe.” Well now, I’m going to tell you, Neville, before it takes place. There’s going to be a contest in Southern California and I have seen his trophy as the first one on that wall. And so, I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you will know that I am putting this into practice. I know he lives by it. “Then there will be another contest,” said, he, “in Miami and one must win in Miami to be eligible for that which will be held in Brussels which will be international.

I am putting him there in Brussels as first among all contestants.” Well I know that he will win. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It’s a delusion of man’s perishing, vegetable memory. He doesn’t remember. Well now, he will remember what he did. And I have his record at home in his letter.

Now he said to me in this letter, “I had a dream. I repeated the dream and then I had a third dream, all in the same night.” So, the first and second was simply the same dream, repeated. “I do not bring back the details,” said he, “of the dream but it was all about, in detail, strangely enough, about my birthday. But I cannot recall all the things that happened. I only know, here stood a man in a white robe with a book in his hand, opened in the middle, it was gilt-edged, and he had a quill in his hand (or it could have been a scythe).

He looked almost like a cartoonist’s concept of Father Time. And he was insistent that my birthday was a certain day and I was equally forceful in stating that it was not because I knew my birthday to be the 19^th of September, 1927, and he was insisting, over my protests, pointing all the things out in the book. And then I woke. In spite of his insistence and my protest, for I knew my birthday, at least that was my physical birthday.” I’ll call his attention to the 87^th Psalm, “And the Lord records as he registers the peoples. And he said this one was born there.” It’s all about birth.

There are only seven verses in it. It’s a small, short psalm. But this is the birth, not of a physical birth, this is a spiritual birth, “and this one was born there.” I can say to him, you did the perfect job as I knew you would in challenging the Lord’s angel, the recording one. For to sin by silence when we should protest, makes cowards of us all. And no coward can be used in his stable of studs. I can say from the way you worded your letter that you have been born; but the perishing, vegetable memory has not brought it back. You have been born from above.

You have had other experiences which would imply an adumbration. But from this letter, I would say you have been. But memory has not brought it back. I am convinced of that from your letter. For it’s all in the past; it’s not present and it certainly is not future the way you worded the letter. For you know your birth date which is physical, and you said the 19^th of September, 1927, and he denied that was the day of your birth. To deny that was the day of your birth would imply you were born in the spirit world because he represents not the physical world but the spiritual world. So I would say of you, you have been born from above.

So, here, take these moments, every moment in time. It’s a special moment, a precious moment, a moment where you can actually use it to plant what you want planted in this world and, remembering that moment, well then, it has to come out. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. Well, that spiritual cause is that moment when you dare to assume that you are the man or the woman that you would like to be or that another man, in his case the barber, that he is the top as he desired to be. So, you can do it not only for yourself, do it for another or do it for many as he did. And these are these precious moments in this wonderful world of ours, but our memory fades and we do not remember.

So when the whole thing rises in our world, we do not relate it to our own harvest. We can’t remember when we ever did it. But not a thing could happen in my world that comes by accident. It couldn’t. All things come because I planted it, either wittingly or unwittingly.

I either did it knowing what I’m doing or I did it not knowing because I was lost in some emotional state, and I felt intensely about a state. It might have been a lovely state or an unlovely state, but the seed was planted and I will reap it. And the whole thing will come into my world whether I recognize my harvest or not. So, if I know this to be the law of life, it is entirely up to me now to select and plant only what I want to reap in my world.

So, everyone in this world is here for a purpose, and the purpose is to fulfill scripture. There is no other purpose. And the fulfillment of scripture brings me out of this world where I must remain until I awaken. Well, I can’t awaken until I fulfill scripture, for scripture is the plan. Now, another lady wrote this one.

She said, “I found myself in this glorious mansion, high, high up. And they had the most beautiful gardens and perfectly kept. And a man and a woman left in a white car and someone said to me, ‘give me two names and they’re names of two relatives of mine.’ But I knew that it was you who had left and I also knew that you would return. Now, I have no memory whatsoever of what transpired between knowing that it was you who left and that you would return.

But I awoke saying, ‘now I know that I have experienced what Neville said that I would.’ Then my throat was parched as though aflame and I went and got myself a nice cold drink of water, went back to bed and had this dream. I’m in a department store and there I am with all these Bibles for brides, Bibles given out for weddings. And, in a strange way, all the brides were dressed in their bridal white gowns and the department store supplied the grooms. They were all being married by proxy. And the department store supplied all the grooms that they may have a wedding picture taken with the groom supplied by the department store.

Then I turned to one and, speaking to her, she said she’s going to Paris. And then I said to her, ‘I’m getting married next month.’” Well, this vision that you had, my dear, is a beautiful vision because, as you’re told in scripture – the Book of Isaiah – “Your maker is your husband, and the lord of Hosts is His name.” So that what you saw is the perfect symbol of what the depth of our own being revealed to you, that you will have union with the Lord and union with the Lord means that that which is in you, like an egg, will be fertilized and then it will erupt within you. And the whole thing said of Jesus Christ will unfold within you, and you will be He. So I can say, you had the perfect vision.

Then another lady wrote. “So, I took my son into the backyard and here was the fish pond that I had. It wasn’t yet stocked with fish, but with clear water and about twelve inches deep. And in it was a little shaggy white dog lying in the water with its little black nose right above the water. I took the dog out and dried it off and took it into the house. And it romped and played all over the place and then I missed it and, searching for it, I went back into the yard and here was the dog in the pool again. But this time, when I walked by, it wagged its tail as though, ‘leave me here, I like being here.’ And it was quite satisfied to be submerged in the water minus the nose above. But the tail wagged as though it was happy to be in that water.” Well, may I say to you, in the Bible, we speak of stone, the water, and the wine.

The stone is the literal story, the allegory. And man must discover the fictitious nature and character of a story. And when he discovers the fictitious character of the story in scripture and then learns its meaning, he has found water. He has struck that rock like a Moses and water flowed out of it. Now, the first miracle or sign in the Book of John is the turning of water into wine. And so, you’re told, “Fill the stone jars with water and when they draw it out of the stone jars, that water that was in the stone jar, it was wine, perfect wine, lovely wine. So, first we have a story and man takes the story and accepts the story literally and so he goes through life with the literal meaning or the stone. When he discovers the fictitious character of the story and then it reveals itself to him, the true meaning, he has the psychological water.

Now the little dog is the symbol of faith. Your faith is now in the psychological meaning of these great truths. If you apply what you know, you will convert it into wine. If you apply it. If you will take what you now know, that imagining creates reality, and dare to imagine that you are now what you would like to be, then you are turning this water into wine.

As told us in the Book of Genesis when Jacob brought the flock into the field, the well was covered with a stone. And he rolled the stone away and watered his flock and then he put the stone back again. He didn’t turn it into wine but he did withdraw water. But a stone covered it and hid the view of the water.

So the story is told to man, because it’s a parable, the whole thing is a parable, the whole thing is an allegory, and if you take it as factual and not as what it really is, the most wonderful parable in the world, well then you’ll never use your imagination to extract from that stone, the water. Therefore, you cannot feed the flock. But if you can actually get from any story in scripture, its psychological meaning and tell it to the world as when Isaac brings his son, and Isaac is blind and can’t see, and he has two sons.

One is called Esau and one is called Jacob. And Jacob covers himself in the skins of a goat to give himself the feeling of hair. For the first one was Esau and Esau was hairy all over. And so when Jacob deceived his father into believing that he was Esau, Isaac gave him his blessing. So you take the story, and as I stand here now, reason tells me that I am not where I would like to be, that I am not the man that I really desire to be. So I shut out what reason is suggesting. I deny everything that reason dictates. I close my eyes to the facts of life, the obvious things, and I clothe myself mentally in all that I would like to be. I imagine that people see me as they would see me if I were the man that I want to be. I imagine that I am actually standing where I would stand if I were that, and that I’m actually doing all the things I would do, normally and naturally, if what I am assuming were really true — if it were a fact.

Well now, when I do this, I am clothing myself in the outer garments of naturalness of the facts. Now when I open my eyes on the facts of life, it denies everything that I’ve done. But I remember what I did. I caught that precious moment. For there is that moment in each day that doubt cannot find, and his helpmates cannot find it. But the industrious find this moment, and so become the industrious. You find this moment and you clothe yourself in all the lovely things that you want to be in this world and, having done it, you can break the spell.

Open your eyes upon the facts of the world and the facts will deny everything that you did. But you’re told in scripture that Isaac, having done it, having given the blessing to that moment, he couldn’t take it back. He could not retract it. And so when Esau comes into the world and tells his father, “but you’ve been deceived; first of all, he took from me my birthright. Now he’s taking from me my blessing.” He’s rightly named.

You named him Jacob which means “he supplants.” He’s a supplanter. But the father Isaac said, “even though he came through deceit and deceived me into believing that he was Esau, I’ve given him your blessing and I cannot take it back.” So that moment cannot be called back. It’s on its way and it will move towards what? The fulfillment of itself. And when it appears in this world, suddenness is only the emergence of that hidden continuity.

So it was moving, unseen by the world and suddenly it erupts in the world. But having remembered what I did, I can relate now that spiritual cause, the thing I did, unseen by others, to the thing seen now, that the whole vast world will share with me.

So, in your case, my dear, having seen the little dog which is the symbol of Caleb or the hound of faith, the one that goes with him, goes with Jehoshua across the river into the promised land. No one else could go. So, you walk in faith in this. And the day will come, you will turn it all into wine. In other words, you will find yourself fulfilling scripture.

The whole thing will unfold within you. Now we told you last Monday the story of Moses and that he did not cross into the promised land, but Jehoshua went over. You may not be familiar with scripture but Jehoshua’s original name was Oshea as told us in the Book of Numbers. You’ll find that in the 13^th Chapter, the 16^th Verse of Numbers. And Moses called Oshea, the son of Nun, Jehoshua. So when you take the prefix, “Je” and put it before Oshea, you turn Oshea which means saviour or salvation, into He by Whom Jehovah Will Save. So it becomes that creative power that actually, I would say, fertilizes what Moses represented. Moses represented the pattern man. See that you make everything according to the pattern as it’s being shown you on the mountain. So here, you’re seeing everything clearly.

That is a pattern. Don’t alter one little thing. Make it just as it’s shown you on the mountain. But I can’t go in. That is the egg, the perfect egg. That’s the ovum. But an egg remains just an egg until fertilized. It must be fertilized by the sperm. So that sperm must penetrate the surface of the egg. It leaves no hole, either before or after penetration. And no one understands how it happens. Because no one knows, it’s all imagination.

I do not need to go through any door to put myself in a closed room. Seal the room, and I can imagine that I’m in it and I didn’t open a door to go through and I didn’t break down the wall to get through and when I depart, I didn’t go through an open door and I didn’t go through by breaking down the wall. I entered without leaving any hole and I departed without leaving any record of my entrance and departure. So, a little sperm penetrates the surface of an egg and it leaves no hole, either before or after penetration. But unless it penetrates, that egg remains just a perfect pattern of what ought to be or could be but could never by itself, ever unfold.

It takes the sperm to penetrate it to make it unfold. And so, it is Jehoshua, which is the Hebraic name of Jesus – the word Jesus and the word Jehoshua are the same thing. So, He by Whom Jehovah Will Save. And so, man awakened from the dream of life, if he is a powerful man, a man like the one I spoke of earlier tonight, one who would defy the angel of the Lord and over his protests, he still is insisting that it’s not the right date. And here he’s pointing to the book of God and showing him that it is.

But in spite of that, he didn’t sin by silence. And because he didn’t sin by silence, he can be used perfectly in the stable of the Lord. To actually impregnate those who have accepted the word of God and have it within them as a pattern. The perfect pattern that must one day, having been impregnated, erupt within that one and unfold within him.

So I congratulate him on his accomplishments. For everyone who is awakened if they are of that spirit, they are members of the stable of the Lord, used for impregnation, to inseminate the brides of God. For he’s God. Everyone in this world is God. But as the lady wrote, she said, “I wrote this letter.

I don’t quite understand it but I wrote and I was repeating, the thing is we are bifurcated, divided beings.” Well, who is the divided being but the Lord Himself. The Lord and his emanation, a divided being. And out of Adam comes Eve, a divided being. And that emanation of the first. Well, here we are emanations. But now these contain the pattern of God’s plan of salvation. And it has to be, I would say fructified, fertilized. And, may I tell you, it seems strange in this world to make these statements, but I know from experience that they’re true.

I know how we play these parts after we have been awakened from the dream of life. When man is twice born, and he’s born from above, if he’s of that school, that spirit, that you re-enter like a serpent. If you go up in this small little way like this, that’s not it. But when you go up as though you are a bolt of spiral lightening and you vibrate the entire skull and you’re still vibrating it trying to get out, and finally you subside. That’s the power it can use. And that’s the one He uses in the fertilization of his bride.

But tonight, you test it on this level and come down to this level and try it. There is a moment in each day and not just a moment, every moment of time is such a moment if you have a desire. You could actually isolate that moment and then clothe yourself with the feeling of the wish fulfilled whatever that wish is until you actually feel all the tones of reality, all the things that you would normally feel were it true.

Now, don’t forget that moment. That moment is productive. And in its own good time, that moment will appear in this world properly clothed as an objective fact. If it takes the whole vast world to aid its birth, it will take the whole vast world. If it takes an army of men to bring it to pass, an army of men. It doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to guide it.

All you have to do is simply do it. And then let it alone as you would put a seed into the ground, confident that it will grow. Well, so you simply drop this, knowing what you did so that you aren’t surprised when it happens in your world. So you want to be a man of wealth; all right assume that you’re a man of wealth. Not that it has any purpose in this world other than that you desired it. Because the man of wealth and the poor man are the same being. The poor state, the wealthy state are only states. The man who occupies the poor state is an individual that never ceases to be that individual. But if he falls into the state of poverty, well then you call him a poor man. But he doesn’t differ from the man who falls into the state of wealth.

For the man in the state of wealth; he’s not any better; he has money, lots of money if he’s a fabulously wealthy person. But that doesn’tput him in a spiritual sense beyond the man that is poor. But the man that is poor doesn’t know he could get out of the state of poverty. All these are states, infinite states and man blindly falls into states. If he knows they’re only states and he dislikes the state he’s in, he’ll get out of that state by now planting one of these moments, these heavenly moments by assuming that I am now secure.

Security is a relative term. It may be that someone feels, well, insecure with a hundred thousand a year income. I’ m quite sure that if you take any of the fabulously wealthy men of our world and say, “your income as of now will be only a hundred thousand a year,” they would instantly have to sell their yachts, their homes, all these things, and give up membership in certain clubs because they couldn’t even pay their servants. If they had a full complement of servants in their many homes, and you said a hundred thousand a year, well, they’ll feel poor. And the average person, if you said,” you have a hundred thousand,” he would feel fabulously wealthy.

So wealth is a relative term. It hasn’t a thing to do with the spiritual growth of a being. None. Because all these are states. So, I can put myself into any kind of state in this world. And so if I don’t enjoy poverty, well then, don’t get into the state. I, on the other hand, have no desire for fabulous wealth because I do not wish the responsibility of fabulous wealth and thinking about it. I can’t see how anyone who is fabulously wealthy has any time whatsoever for thinking about spiritual matters.

He is so concerned about his wealth, his portfolio, and he watches it morning, noon, and night. And the first thing he does in the morning when he gets the morning paper, he turns to that section. And he reads it, as some ladies turn to the social section and they read it, as though it really mattered. But they do it. There are some who only read the obituaries and they make a living out of reading that and notifying all the people who are recorded as dead that he knew them.

I know that when my father-in-law died, he was a very prominent man in New York City. And when he died, why Mrs. Van Schmoose got unnumbered letters from people who claimed that they knew him and he had promised them so much and that he died before he could execute his desire. Some even went so far as to print up all kinds of things and said he ordered these before he died – and then misspelled his name. Printers will send you all kinds of personal cards, saying that Mr. Van Schmoose ordered these before he died. And when we saw them, why, the name was misspelled, and so her lawyer said, “just ignore it, just forget it. And ignore all these requests because people make a living reading the obituary column.”

You’d be surprised how many fall for it because in that emotional moment, they are carried away, well, if my husband did this, I wouldn’t want not to make good, and so they will send off the check for what he had ordered, which he didn’t tell me. And so they send off a nice hundred dollar or two hundred dollar check for these stupid cards. And her lawyer said, “Just simply forget them.”

This happens every moment of time. Well, you can hardly believe that people live that way, but they do. You can’t conceive of something in this world, that someone isn’t doing it. And all these things are done in our world, so I ask you to try it.

On this basis, imagining creates reality. That is my premise. And don’t think for one moment you can imagine idly because the record is there. And so, as a man plants, so he’s going to reap. There isn’t a thing in this world that comes into your world that comes by accident. But you don’t remember the moment in time when you actually did it. And so you can’t relate it to the natural effect. But the natural effect always has a spiritual cause and not a natural cause.

The natural cause only seems. It is a delusion. So don’t let anyone tell you that you can trace it to some physical cause. The physical cause, which is the natural cause, is not a cause. It’s only an effect. All causes are spiritual and by spiritual I mean imaginal. For man is all imagination and God is man and exists in us and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination and that is God Himself. And God is the only source.

There is no other source. In that 87^th Psalm that I quoted tonight, “when this one was born there,” it ends in a very lovely note. “And the singers and the dancers alike said, you are our springs.” There is no other spring, no other source, no other cause. Whether you be the dancer or the singer of the world. You are our springs. We have no other source. So the only source of all causation is found in man as man’s own wonderful human imagination. So you take it to heart and then you never can pass the buck.

You can’t blame anyone in this world for anything that happens to you. There isn’t one in the world you can turn to and say, “well now, you are the cause of it.” Don’t let anyone turn to you and say that.

If they do, just ignore it. Because they’re bringing it into their own world by what they imagine morning, noon, and night. So, one sits down to imagine unlovely things of another, unlovely things of a group, well then they’re going to simply produce it. Not in the group, but in themselves.

So, you go home and live it. Live it as that lady, by her vision tells me she’s living it, because the little shaggy dog was in the water. Her faith is in the psychological knowledge of these stories. I only ask her not to just continue drinking water. As you’re told in the Book of Timothy, “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your many infirmities.” So, it’s good to know what to do but we are the operant power. And, therefore, we must do it, not just know what to do but we must do it.

So when I do it, I stop drinking the water and I drink wine. Because the minute I begin to apply it, I’m using wine. But if I know what to do but don’t do it, well, I have the water but I’m not turning it into wine. So, let everyone here, practice it and put it into a daily practice. And, may I tell you it cannot fail you. It cannot fail you.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville: Now are there any questions?

Question: …a physical upset? Upset when something goes wrong?

Neville: Well, as far as I am concerned, my body is an emotional filter and bears the marks of my prevalent emotions. That’s what bodies are, they’re filters. Emotional filters. And so if you persist in a certain emotion, one of despondency, one of this, one of that, eventually it will take its toll and you’ll find it leaving its mark on these filters. For they are emotional filters. To know, first of all, to know that it is so. And then to stop or try to change these prevalent emotions. You know you have friends who, whenever you meet them, they complain, always complaining. Well, that is almost a permanent state with them. Now, discriminate between the state that they occupy and the occupant. The occupant is not that. But if they remain in a state long enough, they feel at home in that state. If you pull them out, they’ll feel ill at ease. They want to actually feel that no one understands them, that they are this, they are that. And they delight in feeling that they’re misunderstood. If you try to pull them out, they don’t want it. They revel in it. And there are people who live that way. Well, don’t you follow suit. Tell them what to do, and if they do it, they’ll come out of it. There are people who will call you on the phone and who will say, “Now look here, I want so and so.” Thank you, that’s enough. Oh no, but wait, “I must tell you the facts.” And they’ll hold you there, if you let them, for one solid half hour, giving you all the facts why it can’t be done. So they voiced what they wanted and then they proceed to tell you why it’s impossible. And so they live that way. They go through life that way.

Question: (Inaudible)

Neville: Well, I wouldn’t say they should not be in the Bible. We have 66 and it’s good enough. The 27 of the New and 39 of the Old, forming the 66 Books of the Bible, I find it quite complete. But the Gospel of Thomas is a marvelous Gospel, perfectly marvelous. But nothing is lost in scripture by not including it in the Cannon of Scripture. There are many glorious works that are not included in the Cannon. And you can buy them under one copy called the Apocrypha. Thomas is only recently discovered, but you can buy that as a single copy. But the Bible hasn’t lost anything by even the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They’re beautiful, wonderful, dealing mostly with Isaiah, but it hasn’t changed anything in the Isaiah that we have, only confirms it. At one time, the Book of Hebrews was not included in our Bible. But it’s a glorious Book, but now it’s part of the bible

FAITH

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 7-22-1968

The Bible defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, Revised Standard Version)

What is seen is made out of things that do not appear. Faith does not give reality to things that are not seen. It is loyalty to reality that makes things appear. Can I see the facts the world sees and still believe in the unseen state? If I can remain loyal to the unseen state, in some way I will get confirmation of it.

John 14:1-3: “ . . . ye believe in God, believe also in me. “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” This is not Jesus Christ talking to a disciple on the outside; it is I talking to myself. If all things are made by God, and without Him is not anything made that is made (John 1:3), then where is God? In my Imagination!

You aren’t called upon to make the things. All things already are. The whole, vast creation is already finished; I am only becoming aware of it. Any state that I can imagine can be occupied. The whole thing is finished, and all I do is adjust to it and “feel” myself there until it becomes natural.

You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to the unseen reality that gives it objectivity. You can revise the past.

We, you and I, are here, born by the Grace of God, and yet we dare to put a limit on the power of God. Our “sin” is our doubt of God.

“Some men see things as they are and say: Why? I dream things that never were and say: Why not? (George Bernard Shaw). Sen. Ted Kennedy used this quotation in his eulogy of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy without giving credit to the author, however Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was known to quote it many times, giving credit to George Bernard Shaw I know that I must be whatever I am in Imagination. So don’t treat this principle lightly. You truly move yourself into states mentally, wittingly or unwittingly.

A bridge of incidents will develop, over which you will pass until the [state is fulfilled] like pure imagining in us, and that He works in the very depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception; but He streams into the surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy, like a daydream – just a simple daydream.

I think of someone who is maybe a thousand miles away. Well, that act – that perceptive act, unseen by any one, that was God-in-action. Well, can I believe in the reality of that act? Can I represent him to myself as I would like to see him in the flesh? Can I see him successful? Can I see him, well, as I want to see him, and believe in the reality of that unseen state? If I can remain loyal to that unseen reality, I will have confirmation that he is the being that I am assuming that he is. Some one will write me or maybe I’ll meet him in the flesh, but in some way I will get confirmation that what I think I see in him or desire to see in him, and persuade myself that I do see in him, [that] it will come to pass.

Now, one day, in reading the 14th chapter of the book of John, having been told that Christ is in me, and here is Christ now speaking to the disciples, (well, if he is in me, what is he trying to tell me? He is speaking to the disciples)…he said: “You believe in God, believe in me also. In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you? Would I have told you that I go prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye shall be also.” (John 14:1-3) Well, it came to me as I read it, from some peculiar intuitive depth, that I am not talking to a disciple (something on the outside). I’m talking to myself! This whole conversation is something within myself. I take the body called Neville –this visible thing that is weak and limited and fragile, and I’m talking to it. You can’t go; you’re limited. It will take time to get there; it’ll take money to get there. Maybe you can’t afford either the time or the money.

But it will take me – if I’m Imagination – to go any place in this world without money, and I don’t need time. I can sit in a chair and put my body, cumbersome as it is, on a chair or on a bed, and if I am all Imagination, and God is in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination, then I can be any place in this world that I desire to be. So, I can go and prepare a place. So, I tried it. I tried assuming that I am where reason would deny it, my senses deny it, but I remained in that state until it seemed natural to me, just seemed natural. Well, then, I went there. And, then, I opened my eyes upon the world that I had shut out, and it was a shock to find myself back in the chair. Well, I if I analyze it, it seems stupid. What I did – it seemed real while I did it, and then one second later, here I am on my chair, and everything I see in my room denies that I did anything that the world would call real. But I did it! And, then, in the not-distant future, I was forced across a series of events, which led up to the fulfillment of that state.

Now, I did it on a very cold winter night in New York City. I had brought out my first book, called Your Faith is Your Fortune, in the month of February in 1941. It was so cold – twelve or fourteen inches of snow on the ground – and I expected in those days simply a voluntary offering on the part of those who came. And many came just for contacts. They didn’t care what I had to say. They came to meet people, and they would go out for their coffee klatches and all these things after the meeting. I didn’t care. It was a crowded house – over a thousand people – in a little old church off Times Square. I expected that night, when I brought out my book, Your Faith is Your Fortune, that there would be the usual thousand, and this night because of the weather they couldn’t get through the snow, I think we had a hundred and fifty people, and there was a certain personal disappointment, because here was my first effort in bringing out a book. And, so I had my books there and a hundred and fifty came, not prepared to buy the book, and so, we packed up at the end of the talk.

When I went home that night the snow was, as I say, twelve or fourteen inches on the ground, and it was cold. When I got into my bed, I did this thing almost absent-mindedly, but I did it, and I knew exactly what I did. Barbados, where I was born, is a little tropical island in the West Indies, and I assumed that I was actually on my bed in my mother’s home that I knew and loved so well. And to prove that I was actually there, I just imagined the world relative to that position. I saw the world – not from my place in New York City, I saw it from Barbados. So, mentally I saw the world as I would see it if I were in Barbados. I thought of my place in New York City, and I saw it two thousand miles to the north of me. I thought of other places, and they were all related to where I am assuming that I am, and I fell asleep in that assumption. When I awoke the next morning, the snow was even higher, and I am not in Barbados, I am in New York City!

Well, time progressed. The war in Europe was on. England was at war. No ships were plying the Atlantic. They were going down faster than they could build them, and we were almost at war, and then came the month of August, and I received a cable from my family saying: “We didn’t tell you, because we knew you couldn’t come to Barbados. There aren’t any ships,” (and certainly in those days there were no planes) and they said: “Mother is dying. She’s been dying for two years, but now, this is it, and if you want to see her in this world once more, you’ve got to come now” , I mean, now. I received that cable in the morning, and my wife and I sailed the very next night.

One ship was leaving at midnight, the “Argentine,” and we sailed in late August for Barbados. And there I went to Barbados, the last place in the world that I intended to go. In fact, we had planned to go to Maine for a vacation. We were going to close that month and go to Maine for five or six weeks, and then return to reopen some time in October. But all plans were changed to fulfill what I had done in an idle moment because of disappointment.

But it taught me a lesson: not to use this law idly, not to use it to escape, but to use it deliberately because you cannot escape from it. A series of events will mold themselves, across which you will walk, leading up to the fulfillment of that state. And so here I put myself, just to escape from the cold and the disappointment of the evening, in Barbados of all places. Then something happens, and I am compelled to make the journey, the last place in the world we intended to go. And we sailed at midnight, and got there four and a half days later on this “Argentine” ship. (It was an American ship, but it was called the “Argentine.”) Mother dies, as they all said she would, and I returned to the States with the knowledge of what I had done and began to teach it. And in that audience of, I would say, a thousand, they all began to apply it, with tremendous success. Then, where is God?

If “all things [were] made by him, and without him [was] not anything made that is made” (John 1:3) then where is he? I knew exactly what I did, and I know what happened. Well, if I can trace what happened to an invisible cause (what I did) and repeat it, and tell that story to others, who can take it and try it and repeat it, well then, I have found causation. And if all causes spring from God, then I have found him. I have found Him as my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. There isn’t a thing in this world that wasn’t first imagined. Now, here you aren’t called to make the thing. Things are. All things in the world are. “Eternity exists, and all things in Eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy.” (William Blake) You can’t conceive of something that isn’t!

As a result of this in 1941, it was 1949 that I gave a series of lectures in Milwaukee, and the head chemist at Allis-Chalmers came to my meetings. I made some statement using a term that is a scientific term, and the word was “entropy.” Well, I might have used it, not as the scientist would have used it, but I had my own concept of what the word meant and my definition of it, and I said I can change the past. If I can make something, I can unmake it. Whatever I can create, I can uncreate. Whatever I can make, I can unmake. He said: “You can’t do it. For we use entropy in our laboratory every day, and entropy means the past is unalterable; you can’t change it. If the past could be changed, I wouldn’t know what I am doing in the lab…” He said: “All day long I receive little samples of water from all over the world, because we make these huge turbines. And from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – all over the world – they send samples, because the water passes through certain mineral deposits and carries with itwhatever is in that mineral, and, so it cakes. We have to analyze that water and then bring up a solution, because we made the product.” And I said: “I don’t care what you say. I know what I’ve done. And you can undo the past. You can change it.”

“It can’t be done.”

I said: “As far as I am concerned, the whole vast world is finished. Creation is finished, and I am only becoming aware of it. Well, I need not confine myself to what my senses see and what reason allows and what wise men tell me I should accept. I can imagine a state. I can’t see it with my physical eye, but I can imagine a state, and that state imagined is. I can imagine a state that is in conflict with the facts of life. And the facts, you say, are, and they can’t be altered. I can imagine a state that would undo the fact. Well, that state exists. If I occupy that state it will undo the so-called fact you say is fixed forever.” Well, he questioned my sanity, but he was an awfully nice chap. His name was Professor Imhoff. He was the head of the department of this chemical setup. So, while he was a very wise and gentle and kind person.

I returned to New York City, and he sent me the “Scientific News Letter,” dated October the 15th, 1949, in which he said: “Now, Neville, I apologize for having said what I did. This man is far greater as a physicist than I am as a scientist. He is Professor Feynman, of Cornell University, one of the outstanding physicists of our day in speculative, theoretical physics; and this is his letter. And he wrote in this little letter, which was printed in the magazine, a story concerning the positron, a little particle that is produced in atomic disintegration. It’s like the electron, but differs in this respect. It is positive in its charge instead of being negative.

Now, these are the words of Feynman, they are not mine. He says: “The positron is a wrong-way electron. It starts from where it hasn’t been, and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. It is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and then it returns to where it hasn’t been.” (Now, this is Feynman, this isn’t Neville.) Then he goes on to say: “When a little electron is moving speedily in space if it is bounced, it’s deflected, but continues on its course. But if it is bounced so hard, then its time sense is reversed, and it returns to where it hasn’t been.” “Now,” he said, “on the basis of this, we must now conclude that the entire concept that man held of the universe is false. We always believed that the future developed slowly out of the past. Now, with this concept which we have seen and photographed, we must now conclude that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.”

This is 1949. That Professor, Richard Feynman, who is now at Caltech in Pasadena received the Nobel Prize last year for that paper. They held it up almost twenty years, for this is 1968 and he got it in 1967, and the paper came out in 1949. I didn’t know it as a scientist. I knew it as a mystic. I see it. I can’t explain why; I only know everything is. The whole thing is finished, and all I have to do is to adjust to it. If I know what I want for myself or for another, I adjust to it, because the thing is. Well, if I adjust to it and it feels natural, when it feels natural, then I open my eyes upon this world that I have shut out for that purpose. As I open my eyes, I am turned around. I have actually been where reason would deny that I have been there; and then, as I open my eyes, I have been speeding with the speed of light from wherever I have assumed that I am to where physically I am. Now I am so shocked to find that I am not actually there, but I am here physically. My time sense is turned around. And now, I move across a bridge of incidents – a series of events – that compels me to move towards the fulfillment of that invisible state.

And when I get there it is not invisible, it becomes visible. It throws itself on the screen of space, and the world calls that a fact. And they stand amazed at that, because that to them is real. Prior to its becoming objective, it was unreal.

So, I tell you: faith in unseen reality. You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to unseen reality that is the secret of faith. So, when he tells us: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (Hebrews 11:1) by faith, we understand that the world was created by the Word of God, so that “things seen were made from things that do not appear…”

Now, let me share with you this story. A friend of mine living in L.A. came many years ago from Pittsburgh. So in ’66 she returned to Pittsburgh and met the few friends who are still in this world. Many have departed. There was one lady she speaks of as Betty. Well, Betty married this man, and his name is supposed to be Matthew. Well, Matthew was suffering from a certain disease, which led progressively to total deafness. In the interval, it is accompanied by dizziness, and wrenching. What the name is, I don’t know. She told me, but I am not familiar with these medical terms. But it is something that is incurable as of today. No doctor knows how to arrest it, and it progressively moves towards total deafness. In the meanwhile, it is a most painful condition that accompanies it, and these horrible dizzy spells, and then the wrenching.

She told the story as I told it to her, how you can revise the past; that in spite of the fact that he is moving towards the inevitable total deafness, it need not be. They can go back and change the past to the point in time – which was fourteen years before – when this thing began to show in his body. He didn’t believe it. She said to me: “He would ask me a hundred and one questions concerning it, not because he wanted to be cruel, but he is a rational being, a very intelligent person, and it didn’t make sense. Because it didn’t make sense, he discounted it; but Betty thought: ‘”I will try it.’”

“Now, she said, “it was a very difficult thing for Betty and myself, because my parents were both deaf, and Betty’s parents were both deaf, and we were raised in the environment of deaf people. We had to learn sign language to communicate with our parents. So, Betty had the experience of deaf parents, both of them, and I had the experience of deaf parents, and to be confronted with this picture – it was a horrible, horrible picture. Betty said to me: “I will do it every night,” and she took a simple little sentence: “Matthew” (she called him Matt) – “Matt is hearing perfectly.” That’s all that she did. Meanwhile he’s getting worse and worse and worse.

A year went by, and he’s still progressing towards the inevitable end of total deafness, when in his business he had this excruciating pain from ear to ear, and he cried out. Well, they rushed him to the doctor [and] the doctor gave him an injection to alleviate the pain. Then the doctor said: “You can’t go back on the job right away. You must go to your room and rest for a while.” Well, in the room, he dozed, and went into a little sleep and when he awoke, he was hearing perfectly – hearing perfectly!

He was sent home early that evening. He usually arrives at 6:00 o’clock. When he came home on the early side, the wife greeted him with the usual: “Oh, what’s wrong? What happened at the office today?” and he replied: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” He used the identical word that she had, night after night, heard. All in her imagination, she heard him say: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” So, she heard her own name called by her husband, Matt, and he confirmed it by saying: “I am hearing perfectly.” Then he said: “I believe, I believe, I believe!”

Now, that is a year and a half ago. She said: “In the interval we never breathed it, did not mention it in our letters. I communicate constantly, but I did not for one moment state anything further than I did when I was there in the flesh and told her of a principle,” a principle which you could call by any name. We call it God.

Well, God is one’s own marvelous human Imagination. That’s God! Man is all Imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself. And all things are possible to God. You and I – here we are, fashioned by the grace of God, born by the grace of God, and we dare to put a limit on the power of God! Here we, the creature born by the grace of God, and then we tell God (or tell ourselves) what he can’t do. And therefore, give to God, who made us and brought us into the world…and now we give to him the sin against the Holy Ghost, which as far as I see it is man’s doubt.

The only thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is man’s doubt in the power of God.

You might have heard the late Senator Kennedy in one or two of his political speeches. He was very fond of quoting this passage from George Bernard Shaw, in fact, his brother Teddy, in the eulogy in New York City quoted it. He didn’t give credit to George Bernard Shaw, but his brother had done it time and again, and therefore people knew, those who heard him, that it was not Teddy’s or Bobbie’s – it was George Bernard Shaw.

And this is the quote: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’” Why not? The world tells me it can’t be. Why not? Are not all things possible to God? And did not God become me, that I may become God? Well, if he became me, I can’t dissect the body and find him in an atom. I can’t find him in the brain. I can’t find him in any organ of the body. Therefore, where is he? Just where is he? I am told in Scripture he has a name, and this name is his name forever and forever, and the name defined is: “I Am.” Well, that’s the core of my being. I can’t put it aside. I sit down to imagine. Who’s imagining? I am. I have never been able to put “I am” out there and look at it. It is the being perceiving, not the thing perceived. It is the being making, not the thing made. It’s the being creating; not the thing created.

And man stands amazed at his own creations – and forgets the creator. He falls in love with all the things he makes, and he forgets completely the maker; and the maker is “I Am.” There is no other maker. There is no other God. So, when I found that out, I knew that when I went to Barbados, I was actually sleeping in my mother’s home in a bed that I knew well, and it was warm. I could feel the warmth of the tropics. I could detect the odors of the tropics; they differ from the northern world. All the things that are related to the tropics, I detected.

Well, who is doing it? I am. I can’t get away from it. Is that God? Yes. Well, he didn’t take a train there. No, there aren’t any trains. He didn’t take a plane? No, there were no planes then. He didn’t take a ship? No. He simply was there. Wherever I assume that I am, I am there. And, so, if I can assume that I am elsewhere, to the point that some one like my sister actually sees me there, well, I must be wherever I am in Imagination.

One day I had occasion, while in New York City, to assume that I am being seen by my sister, whose son was desperately ill, age 17, and riddled with cancer. No one knew what was wrong with him until they opened him, and then he was too far-gone. The whole body was completely riddled at the age of seventeen! And they say that if you are young when you develop this, then like all young things, it grows. If you are developed to the age of sixty or seventy, the chances are you won’t die of it because things aren’t building then. You are only marking time. But youth is growing.

Whether it be a good cell or a bad cell, it simply grows rapidly. So at the age of seventeen he wasn’t feeling well. They wonder: what’s wrong with the boy? And some one suggested going in and taking a little look on the inside. They thought it might be some appendix or some peculiar thing there. So they opened him up and sewed him back – not a thing they could do. The whole body was simply gone. Well, to comfort my sister, I thought I would put my body physically in New York City and assume I’m in Barbados. I’m in my nephew’s room, and when my sister enters the room she is going to see me, and not her son. I actually assumed that I am there. I am occupying the same space that my nephew Billy occupied, and then when I felt it natural, I assumed that my sister came in. She came in, and she came over and she looked, and she couldn’t see any one but her brother, Neville.

I came out of that silence. I came into the living room where a friend, by invitation, had arrived for a cocktail, because I had said: “Drop by at the cocktail hour – it’s around 5:00 o’clock, and we’ll have a drink.” I went into the silence around 4:30, and I didn’t come out until maybe after 5:00 – 5:15 or 5:20. So when I came into the living room, she said: “Neville, what’s wrong with you? You are always so gay and light. Why do you seem so heavy now?” and I told her what I had just done.

Eight days later (we had no air mail coming, but had to depend upon mail by the sea), eight days later I received a letter from my sister. She said: “Neville, I don’t understand it, but this very moment I went into Billy’s room and I could not for the life of me see Billy. I am seeing you. I walked right over to the bed, and I looked at my son, and he is not there, and it’s you! And you’re looking at me and smiling. And I could not , I tried and tried and tried, and Billy was not there; it is you. I don’t understand it, Neville. If you have any knowledge or anything about it to throw light upon this, tell me.”

That same lady was there eight days later, and I brought her letter out that I had received that day and showed it to her. So I had two witnesses: my wife and this lady. So, I know that I must be wherever I am in Imagination. So I tell you: don’t treat it lightly. You can put yourself in prison, and find yourself committing an act of which you are totally unaware, or accused of something of which you are not aware, and going to prison. People put themselves there. People put themselves out of it. People don’t realize, not a thing is happening by accident. It’s all by unseen causation. So you actually move yourself into states emotionally, and dwell in [them] just for a split second. And you jump back – or you think you jump back. You did. But the bridge is now about to appear, and across the bridge of incidents you walk, leading up to the fulfillment of what you did unwittingly.

So, this is what I mean by faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” You hope for it? Well, now, the assurance is faith. Faith is not going to make it so. Faith is loyalty to the unseen reality. You know what you did? Well, now, that’s unseen by mortal eye. Now, you remain loyal to that unseen reality, and see how this bridge of incidents is woven, and you do not consciously devise it. No man can consciously devise the incidents necessary to lead you to the fulfillment of what you’ve done. Well, this is what I mean by faith. The very substance of what the world calls real is unseen. It’s unseen reality.

The whole vast creation is finished, just as Feynman said, and he got his prize for it. So he got the fifty thousand dollars for that which I said as a mystic, but you can’t give a mystic money, because he has no standing in the community. Feynman has standing. He teaches physics at Caltech, so he could say the identical thing in his own words, and they say: “Isn’t this marvelous?” And so, he has a paper on it, now a book on it, and a title to it, so he has all the titles. And because I am the unknown, and in the eyes of Feynman not educated by his standards, no formal education – but what I see, I see, and I can’t deny it. What I experience mystically, I can’t deny. So, I am speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. He goes in and he theorizes. He experiments, yes, and succeeds occasionally in taking a photograph of the so-called unseen little particle [and] he has enough photographs to prove the existence of the positron. And then comes his wonderful honor, fifty thousand dollars, and all that goes with it.

But I tell you, in spite of all the books that are written, with all the great titles signed behind his name of the author, the book of books is the Bible, and no one knows the authors. They are all anonymous. No one knows who’s Peter, who’s James, who’s Matthew, Luke, Mark, John – no one knows. They are anonymous and they remain so. The characters, no one knows if they ever walked the face of the earth. I tell you that they didn’t. Those who wrote it – they did, but the characters are anonymous. And the characters of Scripture are all eternal states through which man passes.

They are states – eternal states, not historical states. It’s not secular history. It is salvation history. What I have told you so far as of now, in the past week (I gave you five, and tonight is the sixth) it’s all based upon what I’ve experienced. And I tell you: everyone will experience it. Not one can fail, because if one failed, God failed. And He isn’t going to fail. So, let the fool say in his heart: there is no God, like this book, God is Dead and all that nonsense. Let them have fun. He wrote that just to make money. And of course, because the title caught on, especially today, he made oodles of money out of a title, a title with a book full of nonsense. But he’s not alone; he has a lot of company. I tell you: you have faith in God, but don’t look outside to find him. You aren’t going to find him out there. You are going to find him one day by a series of mystical experiences. And when they happen to you, they will happen in the first person, present-tense experience, and you’ll know who God is!

You’ll know that you are, for God’s purpose is to give himself to you as though there were no other in the world, just you. Well, if he gives himself to you completely, there can’t be you and God, just you, and you are he. And the whole plan is set up, and when it begins to unfold within you in a first person, present-tense experience, I can’t tell you the thrill. Now, when you depart this world, you are not restored to life, as all people are who have not had the experience, you instantly put on your body of glory, and you’re in an entirely different age, a different world altogether. And all the others wait for that moment in time when they, too, have the experience. And then when death comes following the experience, they instantly move from the body of decay (for this [is] decay) into a body that is immortal, a body of glory.

So, that is for every one in the world. And may I tell you: don’t try to argue with anybody who tries to give you all the reasons of Caesar why it can’t be. They put you in a little furnace and bring out a few little ashes and say: that was the man. Therefore, he can’t survive, because that’s it. Well then, let him have his little fun. It’s perfectly all right. Let him be amused. Don’t move; let him be amused. He’s such a wise person! So wise in his own council and so wise in the eyes of fools. He can only be wise in the eyes of fools; so don’t argue with him. Leave him alone just as he is.

So, he will find himself – when men call him dead – restored to life, and he will be totally unaware how on earth it could happen. But he’s so blind anyway; he won’t even recognize it. He will take it for granted, as we take breathing for granted. We take all the normal functions of the body for granted, and yet each function is a miracle. You put a little of bread in your mouth, and suddenly by a chemistry you do not understand it is no longer bread; it’s blood and bone and tissue. And what you can’t incorporate into your system and use wisely, you expel. Even the act of expulsion from the system is a mystery. And yet we take all these mysteries for granted, and the whole thing is – oh, well, we call it nature. That covers a multitude of nonsense.

Nature! Define it for me. So, I tell you tonight, you take your dream – your noble dream, not only for yourself, but for others. What do you want? Ask them. Now, don’t argue the point, what do you want? Well then, in your mind’s eye dare to assume that they have what at the moment their reason and their senses deny and everything about them denies; but you remain faithful to the assumption, and your assumption relative to them. Though false at the moment, if you persist in it, it will harden into fact. Now, you try it. I could give you unnumbered cases, but why repeat them over and over?

Every case history in the Bible has been repeated now for two thousand years, and they still hold up, but they are all to encourage man to test God – to try him. “Come, test yourself and see.” You are not asked to test another. In the 13th chapter of II Corinthians: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourself and see, unless of course you fail to meet the test.” Well, if you fail to meet the test because of doubt and lack of faith, well and good. You might go and say: “It doesn’t work.” It’s perfectly all right. So, it doesn’t work for you because you did not believe it. He puts no limit to the power of belief. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So can I really believe at the moment that I am trying to believe, everything tells me it can’t be done? Can I ignore the facts of life, and then persuade myself that it is done and live in the end as though it were true? I tell you: if you try it, you will be able to write me and give me fantastic stories.

But in the end, it is God’s Promise that concerns me. Oh, to teach you the law is marvelous, teach every one the law because you are living in the world of Caesar. You must pay rent, you must eat, you must shelter yourself, you must have clothing – all these things in the world of Caesar are essential, so teach man the law, that he may fulfill all these things. But don’t neglect the Promise. And God’s Promise is to give himself to you. That’s his Promise that he will actually give himself to you! Before he made the Promise, God was the Father, so when he succeeds in giving himself to you, though you are now in the female body, when he gives himself to you (and you will not find it strange) you will one day awake and you are the father, even though you may now be the mother of a dozen children. And in the day it will not seem strange to you that you are father, God the Father. And if he has a son (because he has to have a son if he’s a father) and then that son is going to call you “father” (he is not going to call you “mother”) he will call you “father” in the fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, because Scripture must be fulfilled in man. So, man’s purpose in life is only to fulfill Scripture.

But in the meanwhile, Caesar demands. He demands taxes. He demands this; he demands the other. Well, give Caesar what is Caesar’s, but don’t fail to keep alive the Promise of God, and dwell upon it.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Good.

Now, are there any questions?

(Q. Inaudible)
Neville: My dear, yes! To those who were not present: This friend of ours down south, her name is Marta, she was coming to Laguna to the Art Festival, she and three others, the four of them. It’s a perfectly marvelous festival every year down in Laguna. All the artists come, and the live artistry is perfectly marvelous the way they do it. They are simple little pictures of the great works of art, and then the curtain parts, the lights come on, and you think you are looking at a living, three- dimensional picture – unless there is some little child in it that can’t quite hold the stillness. This lively little girl one night, she had a little itch, and here in the perfect stillness she couldn’t resist the impulse, and there she was scratching herself. But it was a delightful thing just to watch it, because she was so natural in it.

But they are perfectly rehearsed in it. Well, it is a sight that you can’t quite describe unless you go to see the Art Festival. Well, she was coming back, and the four of them stopped in at a Mexican restaurant to have a little snack. She doesn’t really smoke, but she said she wanted a cigarette. And her friend lit the cigarette for her and she took the cigarette and said: “Oh, I have such a strange feeling.” And with that she went right over and fell on the table and she was gone from this world!

Well, Marta has had this experience. I tell you that God actually, literally became man, that man may become God. Every man that is “born from above” knows that he is God. But I could tell you from now to the ends of time, and you will only see me as an arrogant fool. You will never actually believe me until you have the experience to confirm the truth of what I say, because words could not persuade you. You have to actually have the experience.

So Marta, this night, finds herself in this huge, big interior. The front is one sheet of glass, and on the inside are huge, big columns like marble columns. It is very sparsely furnished. She sees one chair, and she takes the chair. She is seated, then, out of nowhere comes a carriage that is self-propelled. There aren’t horses, but it looks as though it should be drawn by horses. The door opens automatically and I step out, wearing an Inverness cape. (You know what the Inverness cape is.) I come forward into the interior of this place and, without showing any recognition of Marta

I began to proclaim the power of God. And she said, as she looked at me I was clothed in sheer power. It wasn’t a merciful power, it wasn’t compassionate, it was simply power. It was creative power. And I am simply talking of power. And she said to herself: “Why, it’s Neville, and he is God!” and she kept on repeating to herself: “He is Neville and he is God; he is Neville and he is God.” And, then, without any further recognition of her, I completed the proclamation of power, turned, and then, as though by appointment, the carriage came into view. The door opened automatically, and I stepped in and vanished. The whole thing vanished.

So, here she saw God clothed in power, wearing the face of a friend. Her friend is Neville. Scripture tells you – and it’s the foundation by which man is set free, when Paul was accused of not being an Apostle, he said: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Haven’t I seen the Lord Jesus?” So, he laid it down as an indispensable prerequisite: to have seen the Lord Jesus in order to be set free from this bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. Then, in the book of John, he said: “I no longer call you slaves, for a slave does not know what the master is doing; I call you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:15) So, here she saw a friend, but the friend was wearing power.

It was God’s power, and she knew it was God. So she is set free. She is not restored as the world is restored when they die. She is set free from this age, and Marta is now in her glorious body. She has met the qualifications for freedom. But I can tell you from now to the ends of time…I could have told Marta, as I did, but not until Marta had the experience, could Marta ever believe. So, they laughed at Paul, because how can you share these experiences with man? You can’t do it. Man has to have the experience. And the lady who was with her, whose name is Marge, had the experience of seeing me on the beach, standing with my back to an enormous body of water.

There was no land beyond; it was simply an endless body of water, and I was speaking to an enormous crowd of people, all of different faiths, different persuasions – yet each heard me in the tongue wherein they were born. And as she came upon this scene (she knew that it’s Neville) she sees Neville, but she also knew he was Jesus, so she has had a similar experience. Only Marta called it God, and she called it Jesus, because she knew she was looking at her friend Neville, but she’s also looking at Jesus.

So, I tell you: in the end there is only one body, and that one body is Jesus. “One body, one spirit, one lord, . . . one God and Father of all” So, in the end, all are Jesus! All are God! All are the Father! I can tell you in words, but I can’t persuade you. I have to desire to persuade you against your will. I know the day will come when you will actually have a similar experience and others will see you in that role, and have an experience and be convinced that you are God.

Now, it frightens people to say that. They want some little God on the outside, and I say everyone is God. We are told that in Scripture: “I say, ye are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you will die like men and fall as one man, oh, princes.” (Psalm 82:6,7) That’s in Scripture, and yet you read it and say: “Oh, it doesn’t really make any difference. That isn’t right. That was wrong. When God dictated that, or inspired the prophet to write it, he must have been drinking. Well, how can that be?” And, so, the prophets – that is, the great scholars – cannot quite understand that passage, the 82nd Psalm. They can’t get it. So, because they can’t get it, it isn’t true. Well, we go through life that way. You will find people all over the world – if they can’t understand something, it just isn’t true, it’s not good, and they will set themselves up as the criterion of what ought to be. Their moral and ethical code is the only code that should be adopted. If they don’t smoke, no one should smoke. If they don’t drink, no one should drink. If they are celibates because nature allowed it, no one should know anything about sex. You find these people writing these things for us after nature has outlawed sex in their life. So, when they hit the age of eighty, because they are impotent, every one should be.

And they write laws and say they were divinely inspired. If today, eating meat on Friday is right (it was always right) and, yet for centuries it was wrong and a mortal sin, but now it’s all right, well, if it is right today, it was always right. Now, if a man can marry today…and eventually they will say the priests can marry, it wasn’t always so that they could not. If you read Scripture, it speaks of Peter’s wife, and yet the present Pope claims that he is directly descended from Peter, the first Pope. Well, if the first Pope was married, then what’s wrong with marriage, when the very first command to man is: “Replenish the earth; multiply and replenish the earth.” That’s the command. So, what’s wrong with multiplying and replenishing the earth? Yet some Pope, who undoubtedly was impotent, just said that no one should marry. If he can’t perform the act, no one should perform it.

All right, we have Pope Alexander VI. Have you ever heard of the Borgias, Lucretia and Cesare Borgia, brother and sister? Well, they were his children, and he was Pope Alexander VI, and their name is associated with poison. If they didn’t like you, you were in their way politically – poison them. They were the Pope’s children. Go back and read history. You can find this in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Pope Alexander VI was the father of Cesare Borgia and Lucretia Borgia, the youngest ever given the cardinal’s hat, at the age of nineteen. Talk of nepotism! Well, now, all this is history. You don’t have to be afraid of it. These are facts. Well, if it was right then, it’s right now! Because God’s Word cannot be altered.

These things are not in God’s Book at all. These are the traditions of men. And we read in Scripture that to keep alive the traditions of men, you go against the Word of God. That’s what he tells you. So, find out, is it Scripture? Or, is it something that a man wants to impose upon society?

Now, you take what we have tried to tell you tonight, the story of faith, and try to live by it. You’ll prove it. You won’t disprove it, not if you realize that you are the operant power. It doesn’t operate itself. You are the operant power. And, then, you will find an easier way of living in this world, and then put your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ in you.

Now, the time is up. Thank you

FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

Scripture makes the most profound statements in the world. You can believe them or reject them, but you will never know their truth until scripture is experienced. When it is once experienced, you can no more deny it than you can the humblest evidence of your senses.

I make the claim God is love. Scripture tells us God is faith, saying: “Through faith the world was made by the Word of God.” And we are told to “Put your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the resurrection of Jesus Christ in you.” Now, I can tell you that his name is I AM and that God’s first revelation to man is that of the Father. I can tell you that all this is true of yourself; that you are God the Father; that you are infinite love, infinite faith, and infinite hope, but you will not know this truth until it becomes your own experience.

After you have experienced scripture, there is no power in the world that can persuade you that you were hallucinating, for when you experience this truth you are on a far greater level of awareness than anything known to man on this level. Whether he be an Einstein, a great financial giant, or a famous doctor, he is aware only of this level and what I speak of here is on an entirely different sphere. What you experience is separate from this world, and that experience is what I call “religion”. Religion is a devotion to the reality of an exalted experience, [the reality] of which reason and the senses may deny, but you will know you had the experience.

Now let me share with you three letters I received this week. One lady – who is very much a lady – writes, “On the night of January 24th I was sitting quietly, meditating, when suddenly something turned or opened in my head and I heard a voice say: ‘I am faith, hope and love.’ A moment later a deep, gloriously masculine voice added: ‘I am the Father.’ Those words touched me with such emotion that I burst into tears and cried and cried.”

The shortest sentence in scripture is “Jesus wept”. At the very end of the drama, one who was supposed to be the rock on which the whole would be established denied the story three times before the cock crowed. Then, remembering all that was foretold, he wept bitterly. Now, to embrace an experience one must have an experiencing nature, for it is only from an experiencing nature that the furnaces of affliction can refine the essence of faith, hope and love.

Here is a statement from the 48th chapter of Isaiah: “Now you will know; now you will hear things that you have never known before. From of old your ears have not been opened, but I tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how can my name be profaned. My glory I will not give to another.”

You may think that because you have perfect pitch and can hear the slightest sound that your ears are opened, but they are sealed to the heavenly voices, completely sealed to the heavenly world. But now I tell you: God is love, he is faith, and he is hope. His initial hope was “Let us make man in our image.” Having the faith that it could be done, it took love to do it. It is love who is put through the furnace of affliction and – although it seems to be hell while experienced – love turns Man into a living soul so Man can respond, for without response there is no action.

In the silence this lady heard the words: “I am faith, hope and love” followed by a deep, masculine voice saying: “I am the Father”. Now she knows that she incarnates God and that he radiates from her own wonderful human imagination. Having had this experience, there is no priest, no minister or archbishop who could persuade her out of it. This lady is unknown to the world, yet she has experienced that which is unknown to its intellectual and financial giants.

I tell you scripture is true, and the day will come when the voice will reveal her as the Father. That is when God’s only begotten Son stands before her and calls her “Father.” Then she will know and say: “I have found David; he has called me My Father, My God, and the Rock of my salvation.”

You might think that a lady could not have the experience of being the Father, but in this dimension of which I speak we are the Elohim. We are not male or female, but God, yet God made up of many. The word “Elohim” is a compound unity, one made up of many. We are all the one Father of the one and only begotten Son, the quintessence of man’s experiences, personified as David. The voice who spoke to her declared eternal truth, and when you stand in the presence of the Risen Christ and hear the words, “God is love,” you will know its eternal truth. And when he incorporates you into his body, you will not be two any more, but one. Then, as he incorporates himself into another and still another, we will all be gathered back into the one body, the one Spirit, and we will all know we are the Father. There aren’t numberless Fathers. We all fell from the one Father, and we are all gathered together back into the one Father, who said to the lady: “I am the Father.” I can’t tell you my thrill when I received that letter.

Now, to have a great experience you must have an experiencing nature, for only by an experiencing nature can you devise the essence of faith, hope and love. And when it happens the tears fall. Peter was not emotionally moved when the truth was intellectually heard, but when it was experienced and the whole thing came to pass in him, he wept bitterly. One day you will experience scripture and know how true it is. I am speaking from experience when I tell you that I stood in the presence of the Risen Christ and spoke the words of Paul: “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Then I was embraced by Man who is infinite love, who is God. And what I have experienced you will experience also.

There are those who speak of God as an over-soul, or impersonal force. They have become so abstract in their concept of this creative and redeeming power. But God is not an over-soul or intangible force, but Man, and he speaks with a voice as I speak to you now. You hear me in the tongue in which you were born. When God speaks to you, you will hear him in your natural tongue. And when you stand in the presence of Infinite love it is Man, and yet you will know he is all love.

Now let me share another experience. We are told in the Book of Genesis that when a dream is doubled, God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. This lady had three dreams of elephants. In her first dream she said: “It was the mating season, and I saw many elephants, all in the creative act.” This dream was followed by a dream in which she found herself standing by a river, surrounded by mountains. On the river’s bank stood three stone elephants, and as she looked at them they became animated, entered the river, and swam downstream. Watching them she said to herself: “This is the second time I have seen stone elephants. The last time was when they came out of the mountains.” Then she added: “When I awoke I realized what I had said was true.”

There is a language of symbolism that is universal. Regardless of whether you are in Africa, in China or here, in the depth of the soul the elephant is the symbol of God’s creative power and wisdom, which is defined in scripture as Jesus Christ. In her dream she remembered another dream, so this dream is bordering on self-revelation, which is God revealing himself in her.

God’s creative power has made itself known to her and she will, in the immediate present, have tangible proof of the fact that her own wonderful human imagination is Christ Jesus. All things are possible to God, and by the exercise of this power she can prove that she is the creative power of the universe. Symbolized as in the creative act, this power appeared as stone which has not been made alive. Something was seemingly dead in her world, but it doesn’t matter, the power is not there. It’s not in space, in the stars, or teacup leaves. Power is not in anything outside of the human imagination. All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. To prove this to herself, she saw the elephants as dead, all made of stone. Is there anything more inanimate, more dead, than stone? Yet the moment she beheld them they became animated and entered the stream of life.

She was in a wonderful mountainous area, and all through scripture revelations took place from the mountaintops. Jesus was on the mountaintop when he transfigured himself, and now, here in this mountainous area, her own creative power was revealed. So I repeat: God the creator and your own wonderful human imagination are one and inseparable; therefore, he will never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. Now she knows – as does the other lady – that she incarnates God, and God radiates from her as her own wonderful human imagination.

What are you imagining right now? Is it something disastrous? Or is it a wonderful thought that has caught fire within you? No matter what your thoughts may be, they will come to pass, for there is nothing in this world but that which was first imagined. In the January issue of a magazine called The National Observer, there is a picture of a demolished railroad threshold. You see a large section of the train broken, with many cars demolished and one suspended over the edge of an embankment. It is a photograph of an accident which happened recently in Rubin, Idaho. This same picture had appeared in their December issue, and when a reader in Springfield, Virginia saw it, he thought it strangely familiar. Then he remembered that nineteen years ago he had been sketching, and a scene just came out of his imagination, a scene that was a duplicate of the accident that happened this past year. Sending a picture of his sketch to The National Observer, he asked: “Is it fate that my picture so closely resembles the actual accident?” He thought the train wreck was the actual event, but it was the effect. He was the cause. This is a world of shadows. He drew the accident, even to the trees surrounding it, and what he called the actual event was only the effect in the shadow world.

So I say to this lady: you have touched the depth of your soul, the creative power of God, and no one is going to take it from you, for your power has grown to the point of revelation. You can’t turn back now and believe in any outside God. Those who have not had the vision can still turn back. They are those on whom the seed fell, and although they eagerly took it, the cares of the world took them away. Or those that, because the seed fell among thorns, it was cast off. Or those that, traveling the highway of life, they tried and proved their creative power but decided that it would have happened anyway, or that it was just coincidence. But in your case, my dear, you can’t turn back. There is no power on earth that can turn you back to any orthodox belief, for you have seen the symbol of the creative power of God. Starting as the creative act, you turned stone into something alive and it has entered the stream of life. You know now that you have the power to take something that is dead and barren as stone and in your mind’s eye resurrect it, breathe upon it, and make it alive.

Now, the other letter was from a gentleman. His is on another level. In his dream he sees a house from which a glow radiates from its windows and doors. Someone near asked: “When you enter the house, how will we know you are doing it?” And he answered: “I only do what is necessary, but no matter what I do you will still say it is a trick.” Then a voice spoke from within him saying: “I have power I know not of.” This gentleman has the power to create, but he has not entered the state of consciousness to exercise it. He knows that when he enters this house and things happen, it is he who says it would have happened anyway. There are no others, there is only God in this world. Although he answered the question, there was doubt, and he always takes it with him as he enters a new state of consciousness, therefore never quite sure that his imaginal act was the cause of the phenomena of his life.

Here we see various levels of the revelation of God within Man. The first one was the fantastic “I am the Father” and in the not distant future she will know this truth in the most intimate manner. No longer will it be as a voice coming from the depth of her soul, but she will know she is the Father when God’s only begotten Son stands before her and calls her “Father.” In the meantime God is radiating from her own wonderful human imagination. She knows that I am Faith, I am Hope and I am Love. She has read it in the 13th chapter of Corinthians. She has heard it from the platform, but she knows it now from revelation. She heard the words coming from within herself and when David, in the Spirit, calls her Lord, she will prove to herself that everything I say from the platform is true.

So I repeat: We will not know scriptural truth until it is experienced, and then we cannot deny it any more than we can the humblest evidence of our senses. God’s first revelation to Man is Power, Almighty God, El Shaddai. His second revelation is I AM. “My name is in you, listen, take heed, harken to my voice, for my name is in you.” And his final revelation is that of Father.

In the 40th Psalm it is said: “Thou hast given me an open ear.” This is repeated in the 10th [chapter] of Hebrews in this manner: “Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me.” The open ear of Psalms has now become a body, an immortal body that cannot die. Something turned and opened, and although from of old the lady had not heard, now she hears. Your garment of flesh and blood has ears, but I speak of an entirely different body. I speak of the body which has been put through the furnaces, which has been prepared for the heavenly kingdom. So judge not from appearances, for although they may be famous and extremely rich they are still asleep, and when they depart this world they will enter another world of the dead. But she – although unknown here – will enter the world of life, for her body has been prepared for the age that is to come.

Your faith is justified not by any argument, but by an experience. Tell me what you believe and I will hear your confession of faith. Tonight, believe the words the lady heard. Say within yourself: “I am the Father” and you will hear your own confession of faith. That is where the true spirit of scripture is – all within self. And God’s creative power is in you. So if tonight you want something, know it is contained within you and you have the power to animate it and make it alive. Then have faith, have confidence that in its own good time what you have imagined will come to pass. You need not tell anyone or devise the means of its fulfillment. All you need is faith. Through faith we understand that the world was created by the Word of God. So set your hope fully upon this grace of God which is the hope of Man. God gave himself to you as though there were no other, and when his Son stands before you and calls you “Father” you will know that faith has transformed itself into vision, that hope has been completely realized, and that love endureth forever.

Now let us go in to the silence.

FAITH IN GOD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 02-05-1968

In the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews, faith is described as: “The assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so things seen are made out of that which does not appear.

In the Hebraic world, the rabbi is the father of his congregation. Paul called his followers his little children, saying: “Although you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. I became your father in Jesus Christ through the gospel. I urge you then to be imitators of me”

Defining Christ as the power and wisdom of God, Paul tells us we have many guides. In fact, there are as many guides to your success as there are people in the world. Ask someone how to get a job and he will say you must know the right people. Another will tell you that you must have an education, and still another that you must join the right club, or live on the right side of the street. You will be given as many directives towards your objective as there are people you ask.

Although our guides in the operation of this law are countless, as we apply it our creative power will become personalized and take on form, as it did in Paul. And when that happens there is no one to turn to but self. That is why Paul urges everyone to test himself, otherwise he will not realize that Jesus Christ is in him and fail to meet the test.

Paul tells us that the world was created by the word of God, and John says Jesus Christ is that word. (Revelation 19). Jesus Christ is he who created the world and all things within it, be they good, bad, or indifferent. And who is He? Your own wonderful Human Imagination! God’s creative power – as pure imagining – works in the depth of your soul, underlying all of your faculties, including perception. He streams into your surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy.

This is what I mean when I ask you to test Him. I am not in the habit of wearing a flower in my lapel when standing at the platform, but today I was thinking about asking you to hold a rose in your hand. As I did I held a red rose in my imaginary hand and felt its soft, velvety touch. At that moment I called forth a rose which was not seen with my mortal eye but seen and felt in my Human Imagination. This evening that unseen reality became seen, as a lady came with a red rose and asked if I would wear it.

God is a protean being. It is He who is playing the part of the lady who gave me the rose I imagined. There never was another Jesus Christ and there never will be another! He is the creator of the world and all things in it, even a simple little thing like a rose. When the lady decided to pick some roses from her garden, she had no idea she was executing a simple experiment on my part. This afternoon I held a rose in my hand, thereby calling a thing that was not seen as though it were seen; and tonight the unseen becomes seen. That’s how the world was created by the Word of God, who is the Human Imagination!

Have faith in Jesus Christ, not as some being on the outside, but as your own wonderful Human Imagination. If anyone says: “Look! There is Christ,” or: “Here he is,” don’t believe him; for Jesus Christ is the creative power of the universe and He is in you as your very thought!

Although it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He appears we will know him, for “we shall be like him.” As your father in Christ, through the gospel I teach I urge you to be imitators of me until Christ is formed in you. Then the true meaning of the fatherhood of God will be revealed, and you will know yourself to be the Father. Everyone and every living thing in the world is a part of being played by the one and only Father, who is God. The whole is contained in the feeling Father, and the world is pushed out from every Father.

Omnipresent, God is alive in you now, so I ask you to test Him. Would you like a better job? Greater income? Greater recognition? What would you do right now if it were true? Now test God by thinking of a friend. Hear him congratulate you on your good fortune. See his face light up with joy and feel his presence. Do that, and you have performed a magical act, for God has acted and all things are possible to God.

You do not have to devise the means necessary to make your imaginal act come to pass. He who thought of the friend and saw the whole thing will build a bridge of incident across which you will move to the fulfillment of that which has been done. That is Christ!

Certainly this lady is not in the habit of bringing me flowers and I never wear one on this platform, but I couldn’t help but when I saw all those lovely roses and heard her say: “I cut these from my garden today. Will you please wear one tonight?” Then she picked out a red one. I had painted that picture vividly in my mind’s eye and she played her part perfectly. So I ask you to try using your Imagination in this most simple way.

Now let me share an experience of a daughter and her mother. The daughter wrote, saying: “While in the silence I heard the crying of a child. It was not the cry of a baby, but of the ages. It was a sound I knew would arouse man from his deep sleep and set him free to eternal joy. I have seen and heard many things in heavenly spheres, but nothing compares to the cry of this heavenly child.” Her experience reminds me of Blake’s words when he spoke of the daughters of Beulah, saying: “They 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.”

In the mother’s letter, she said: “In my dream my daughter called to say she was alone and the baby was due. As I entered her apartment I realized it was not my daughter on the bed, but a friend. Then I realized I was holding a newborn child wrapped in a blanket and knew it was mine. The scene changed and I found myself in a hospital. My daughter appeared, saying: ‘I have gotten in touch with my father, Neville. He is coming to see me.’ Then you and I are standing looking at the child, as he smiled, displaying perfectly formed lower teeth. Looking at me you said: ‘Have you forgotten that all the children in my family are born with perfectly formed teeth?’ Then you turned and walked away.”

In the Old Testament, David cried out: “Arise, O Lord and break the teeth of the wicked.” And in the New Testament, those who refused to accept the doctrine of Christ wept and gnashed their teeth as the door opened and the righteous entered the kingdom of heaven.

Loving the glamour, the praise, and honors of men, man pays no attention to the invitation to enter the kingdom by applying this principle. Instead, he follows countless guides in Christ by feeling he must meet the right people and live on the right side of the tracks in order to succeed. So when the moment comes and those who abide by the gospel of Christ enter the kingdom, those who chose the countless guides will show their remorse and anguish by gnashing their teeth.

When Christ is formed in you I will no longer be your father. I have introduced you to Him and fathered you while your faith is child-like, but when Christ is formed in you, you will know yourself to be the Father.

In the world you may think yourself wise in the language of God, but if David does not call you Father in the spirit, you do not know what you are talking about! You will never know that your Human Imagination is being formed into the likeness of God the Father until it is revealed in you. When your Imagination is completely formed, you are born from above to discover the Fatherhood of God. You will see the sacrificial cross that God crucified Himself on split from top to bottom as you ascend into the kingdom of heaven. And the Holy Spirit will descend upon you in bodily form as a dove. On that day God the Father will abide with you and all you will feel is love!

In the meantime, test Jesus Christ, God’s creative power in you as your Human Imagination! Do you want a better job? More money? Whatever you want claim it just as simply as I did the rose. Put on the feeling of possession and wear it as though it were true right now. If it is a better job you want, where would you sit if you had it? How would your mate see you? Sit behind that special desk and let your wife (or husband) see you there. Live as though it were true and have faith in Jesus Christ, the creative power and wisdom of God.

People have personified this power and hung little icons on the wall. They cross themselves before these little things made by human hands. But God is like pure imagining in us. He works in the very depths of our soul underlying all of our faculties, including perception, and streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy.

You can catch God in the act of creating by holding a dozen roses in your arms, smelling them, and feeling their soft, velvety petals. As you fill a lovely crystal vase with water and place the roses in it, observe the stems though the crystal. Look closely and you will even see the water level in the vase. As you do this, God is streaming into your surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy.

Imagination is defined as spiritual sensation. Come, let us now sense spiritual things that are not physically present. Right now I want you to feel a tennis ball, then a baseball, a volleyball, and a golf ball. They all feel different, do they not? If you can discriminate between these different balls, are they not real? If you can touch a tennis ball and spiritually distinguish it from a baseball, it must exist, even though it is unseen by mortal eye. So you see: you can behold a thing that is not seen by the mortal eye as though it were, and if you do your faith in Jesus Christ will cause the unseen to become seen.

Jesus Christ is contemporary, not some being who lived two thousand years ago. God Himself came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. As your Human Imagination, He is your very being. If all things are made by Him and you can trace the origin of an event to its imaginal act, you have found Him.

All things were made by the Human Imagination and without Him was not anything made that was made. If during the day you imagine unlovely things, they are going to happen! The world believes that Jesus Christ is another, but the great Hebrew confession of faith tells us: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” There is only one creator. It is the Human Imagination who kills and makes things alive, wounds and heals. Whether you use or misuse your creative power, the same being will bring it to pass. So if you desire lovely things, you must imagine lovely thoughts. Your friends are your own lack or limitation made visible. Like Job, pray for your friends and your own fears will be lifted.

In Hebrew, the words for faith are “amen” and “emet”. In the 3rd chapter of Revelation, God’s creative power is called “the Amen”: “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness.” And in the 1st chapter of 2 Corinthians we are told that all the promises of God find their fulfillment in the Amen. “That is why we declare the Amen through him.”

The God in you and in me is He who made these promises. As a physical man called Neville I can do nothing, but I can do anything that I imagine! Imagining a thing and thinking it is done is saying amen in the belief that, because I imagined it, it must come to pass. How it will happen, I do not know. I only know it will, just as the rose appeared this evening.

I ask you to test your creative power every moment of time. Live with absolute faith in Jesus Christ. He is a person because you are a person. As you imagine a state, the creative power of the world will bring it into reality. Claim a glorious future for yourself by making the future the present. Have your friends congratulate you on your good fortune now, and have faith in Jesus Christ, knowing he is your Own Wonderful Human Imagination!

Now let us go into the silence.

FEED MY SHEEP

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 7-01-1956

This morning’s subject is “Feed My Sheep.” This is simply saying: practice the truths you have heard, for it means to shepherd the thoughts of the mind. For most of us, our thoughts are like rambling sheep that have no shepherd. We are called upon now to rule the thoughts, to rule the mind.

As you know, the kingdom of heaven is as a man starting into a far country, and he calls unto himself his servants and gives them his property, his goods. To one he gives five talents, to another he gives two, and to another he gives one – “every man according to his several ability.” And when he returned he asked for a reckoning. The one who had five traded and produced another five. He was highly commended and told as he was faithful over a few things he would now be ruler over many. The one who had two, he too traded and produced four, and he too was highly commended and told to enter into the joy of the Lord. But the one who had one was afraid because his master – so he thought – was a hard man, and so he buried his talent in the earth and did not expand it. But I think you know the story. He was condemned for his misuse of the talent. It was taken from him and given to the one who had the most, the one who had ten.

Well, now you have received talents in the last few days or few weeks, each one according to his ability. Some of us came with more prejudice to overcome, with more superstition, some with other beliefs that did not quite coincide with what we heard from the platform, and many of us had to overcome certain things before we could accept others. So, some got one talent, some two, some five, some maybe more. Now, a talent that is not exercised, like a muscle that is not exercised, finally sleeps, and as far as we are concerned, it atrophies. It doesn’t really die, but it goes so sound asleep, it might just as well not be part of ours. We must practice what we have heard, for without practice the most profound understanding in the world will not produce the desired results. So a little talent (call it a talent now) if you really expand it, if you exercise it, will be far more profitable than many talents that you do not exercise.

This morning we will just take one or two of the talents that we offer you. I can’t force them upon you – “we offer you.” Here is a statement from the Book of Amos: “I will sift the House of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.” I will sift him and scatter him all over the nations of the world, but not the least grain shall fall upon the earth. Do you know who Israel is? Who this Jacob is? The Israel means “Is Real.” You can’t find it on the earth – don’t look for it on the earth, and yet you must find him, for ” formed him in the womb to be my servant and to bring Jacob – which is Israel – again unto me.” [Isaiah 49:5] So you and I were formed from the womb to be the servant and to bring Jacob unto the Lord.

He is scattered all over the world but you will not find him – no, not the smallest grain – upon the earth. But you will find him within yourself, for the cue is given in Jacob. Jacob is the smooth-skinned lad. He is not like his brother Esau, who has hair, which means something external. So the Israel you are looking for this day is the thing you want to realize in the world. Do not look out and hope to find it or even to be encouraged that you will find it, by judging after the appearances of things. Do you seek health for a friend? That’s Israel scattered, but not on earth. In all the nations of the world I have scattered the house of Israel, but do not look into the eyes of a doctor for hope. Do not look into the eyes of the patient for hope of his recovery because you will not find him on earth. Not the least grain has fallen upon the earth.

So do you know what you want in this world? If you know exactly what you want, where do you see it? You see it in the mind of yourself. So when you know what you want, here is a part of Israel scattered, and you didn’t see him on earth. You saw him in the kingdom within you, for the Kingdom of God is within. So you saw a piece of Israel, now go bring him. I formed you from the womb to be my servant and to bring Jacob again unto me. You take that thing you have seen in the mind’s eye, which to make it practical, we will think of as a friend in need. It may be physical need, maybe he is unwell, or it could be he needs a job. Well, now you be the one who will decide what part of Israel you will bring to the Lord and prove to the Lord you are a perfect servant.

For the promise is that when you prove you are the perfect servant, then you will no longer be called servant; he will call you his friend. “I no longer call you servant for now I call you friend for you do whatsoever I command you and, therefore, if you do what I command you, you are no longer my servant, you are my friend.” And now we will commune as a man to a friend, face to face. Another “you” has had this association for a while, for that is the purpose of it: to move from the servant to the friend; and after we become the friend of God for a while, then we turn to that of the Son. We no longer are the friend. We become his Son, but we cannot recognize the Sonship of God until we first prove ourselves as a servant. So the servant is to bring Israel, i.e., imagine lovingly and believe in your imaginal activity.

Now, we come back to the friend in need. Represent him to yourself as though he now embodied the state you want him to realize in this world. If it is a job, see him gainfully employed, take your imaginary hand, which is Jacob’s hand, and put it into his imaginary hand. Leave it in that imagined state until it takes on the tones of reality. When it seems to you real, that you are actually touching him, clothe it with all the reality of the external world. So Jacob clothed himself in the skins of Esau to deceive his father into believing that he, Jacob, was Esau. So you take the Jacob within you, which is the smooth-skinned lad, which is simply now the wish.

You want to congratulate him. You want to hear his voice. You want to hear him tell you he has never been so happy in a job in his life, he has never been so gainfully employed, that he loves going to work, he just loves everything about his job. You actually hear him as though you heard him. Now you clothe it with all the tones of reality. If you have two talents, give it two; if you have five, give it five. Begin to make it more and more real. The day will come, maybe this day, you will so clothe your Israel with the skins of Esau that you can actually bring it as an objective fact to your Father and prove you are a servant.

For he formed you from the womb to actually be his servant. And what is the servant to do? To bring Jacob unto me again. So here Jacob is, scattered – lost in all the minds of men. You won’t find him on the earth. You will only find him if you know where to look. Now to prove you know where to look, to prove you are a good servant, go bring me Jacob. So when you bring Jacob, you bring Jacob clothed in your own mind’s eye as though you heard what you want to hear, as though you touched and you witnessed what you would like to touch and see in this world. And when you remain faithful to your vision, the vision will make for itself that perfect body in which to abide.

Then you will see an objective corresponding fact, but it is not there. It is all within your own mind. It is there where he scattered it; it is there where he sustains it. He will simply project it for you onto the screen of space that you may have tangible evidence that you do know how to find and bring Jacob. If I know how to go searching for my Israel, if I know how to go looking for him and how to clothe him and give him the appearance of reality and I don’t do it, then I am not the good servant who took the five talents and expanded them; I am the one who buried it.

Now, some of us are almost afraid to test it because we are comforted if we can believe this without quite putting it to the test; for if we put it to the test and we fail, then we have no faith. We cannot go back to the former comfort that we enjoyed, say, in a more orthodox meeting. We thought we would find it here, and if I don’t test it and prove it to my own satisfaction, then I have neither the old comfort of the orthodox concept nor the comfort that I enjoyed here, for I disproved it. So I invite you to attempt, if you will, to disprove it.

You can’t disprove it, but if you go out knowing where to look for your Israel, knowing why you are fashioned from the womb to be a servant, that is the first stage. Until you test yourself, until you prove you can do it, you are not a servant, not a servant of the Lord. But as you become a servant of the Lord, he will make you his friend. Then the relationship will be on a higher level. You will commune with your Father as a man does with a friend, face to face. You will not see him as an object in space, but you will actually know how to bring about a wished-for state of mind – bring it about at will.

As you can bring about a wished-for state of mind, you have made of the deep – which is your Father – a friend, and you will actually know that companionship between the deep of self and you, the being that is really a wonderful imagination. Then the day will come, having been a wonderful friend of God, the seal will be broken and you will be revealed as the being you really are, which is the Son of God and the Father. Every person in the world is the child of God believing itself to be a man born of man.

I have tried in the past two weeks to convince you that your origin is God. It is not what the world would tell you – a little bug. For if you were a little bug, a little spermatozoa, though you seem to embody yourself and expand in the form of a man, your end will be a little spermatozoa, for all ends run true to origins. So whatever the origin, you can determine the end. I tell you your origin is God, therefore, your end is God. But to arrive at that end, you pass through the stages of the servant, then the friend, then God, which is the Son of God. For I and my Father are one, yet my Father is greater than I.

Yes, I do not claim that this union, this oneness, entitles me to the same identical feeling of being Father. I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I. For the thing symbolized that bears witness of this unseen state is not really as great as that which it symbolizes. So we are one and I will know it, and I will see my Father and see that he and I look alike, yet we are Father and Son relationship. But before I can get near it, I must prove I am a good servant.

Now, you take it this morning. We invite you to try it for a friend. We ask you to try it for yourself. We have given you many angles how to test it, how to think of what you want first and see in your mind’s eye – Israel. For when I know clearly in my mind’s eye what I want, I am actually looking at Israel, something that is real. It is real, but I must clothe it now in what the world calls reality by giving it external tones. But the thing was real long before it became a visible fact in the world. I see it in my mind’s eye by making as vivid and as lifelike a representation as possible of what I would see and what I would do and what I would actually hear, were I physically present in such a situation now.

When I see it clearly I am looking into the eyes of Israel, and I found him scattered in the world – but not on the earth, for it is not on earth that I see him. I see him in my mind. Now I am looking at it, and thinking of it, but the secret is to think from it, to occupy that state and get into it. When I get into it I will clothe it with reality. I can think of a place and then close my eyes and assume that I am in that place. When I assume I am in the place, I am clothing it with what the world calls reality. It was real before I clothed it – when I saw it clearly this was Israel – but he wants me to bring him, and the only way I can test that I can bring him and prove that I am the servant, is to occupy the state.

So, I occupy the feeling of my wish fulfilled. When I get into the feeling of the wish fulfilled and remain faithful to that state, then I am walking in my vision and – as we are told – if one would only advance confidently in the direction of his dream and endeavor to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected. Let me remain faithful to my vision by occupying my vision – don’t just see it. He demands that I bring him, bring Jacob again unto the Lord.

So Jacob is not a man who walked the face of the earth thousands of years ago, and Israel is not a nation now gathered together on the shores of Africa. He scatters the house of Israel in all the nations of the world. You might have been taught to believe that the person who calls himself a Jew in the presence of a nation is scattered Israel. Don’t believe it. Everyone in the world is that which actually contains and holds Israel. As you think of something and desire it to be a reality in your world, you are seeing Israel. Now he wants you to bring him and he wants you to prove that you can bring him and become the perfect servant of the Lord. Don’t be afraid to be the servant; become the perfect servant of God and then become his friend, and then realize you are his Son.

Let us go out determined that we will take the requests brought in here this morning There were a hundred odd that came in, but there are many more. Maybe you do not know them; you can take them collectively. But you can take an individual friend, a member of your family, and decide this day you are going to bring about some blessing in the individual’s life, you have it – you have the power to bless; for the power to confer reality on your wish for the friend is the power to bless that friend. If your friend is not well and you want the friend to be well, you simply assume that you and he (or she) are carrying on a conversation from a premise which you establish now, and the premise is that he or she never felt better in their lives, and you hear it and you witness it. Take your hand, your imaginary hand, and embrace them.

Tell them what you feel about them, actually feel it. And then you do nothing outwardly to make it so, for things that you are going to see are not made of things that do appear. So you do not prescribe anything for them. You do not change their physical diet. You don’t offer any recommendation as to what they should do. You simply assume that they are already the embodiment of the state you desire for them, so you don’t start prescribing. Leave that out completely. You simply walk faithful to your image of the friend and you transform that image in your own mind’s eye.

You do it and see if you can bring him, because if you can’t do that and prove it to yourself, you have not yet proven you are a servant; therefore, the friendship is far removed from you. Everyone must prove that he is first a servant, as we read in Isaiah 49: “I formed you from the womb to be my servant and to bring Jacob again unto me.” Then I am told: even though Israel is not altogether gathered I am blessed. The individual who does it, he doesn’t have to bring the whole body of Israel. If he brings Jacob – one individual transformed – and proves he can transform him, he is blessed and receives a certain glory long before the body of Israel is collected and brought back.

So here you wonder why he is called “the king of Israel.” Why is he called the king? People thought it meant a man who looked out upon a small little nation and thought he was king, or they thought he was king (or even in irony when they said it). He isn’t that. The individual who becomes Son is truly king of the whole vast world of Israel, or [of] the ideas floating in the mind of man. For he is their shepherd, he is their king. He can command any idea to clothe itself in form. That is the king of Israel. That is the one that can make real a state that is only a wish. “Is Real” is the true Israel. Here, long before we become that – lifted up – we must start to discipline the mind to become the perfect servant.

There is no better time to start than now. If you are afraid to try it, then I wouldn’t know what to tell you, because in this place you must test it. They do not have a religion where you just come here and sit on Sundays and gather together and form a nice little friendship this way. This is not that kind of a religion at all. This is all to awaken the mind of man and make him a shepherd, make him something that rules. In fact, the very word translated “feed” in John 21 is translated many times in the Bible as “shepherd,” as “rule.” In Matthew 2, one shall come from Bethlehem; he shall have dominion over Israel.

Well, in that one (he shall rule Israel) the word translated “rule” is the same word translated in John 21 as “feed.” So don’t take it literally. It simply means to take this mind of yours and discipline the whole mind by gathering things together and walking faithful to an invisible state, for Jacob is invisible. You thought he was a man who was a smooth-skinned lad.

That is the way the mystic has of telling you this is a subjective state, and that you must learn to clothe [it] with objectivity. You walk faithful to the subjective state, and then in time it takes on the tones and the appearance of something external. The moment you detach your mind from that state – though at the moment of detachment it had some corresponding external witness – it will begin to fade.

If you detach your mind from success in the midst of success, success as a reality outside of you fades and vanishes from your world. And then whatever you put your mind on, it takes the place of, proving success was not on the outside at all; it was within you. You clothed it for a moment and gave it the appearance of reality. But the day you are not faithful to the consciousness of being successful, the seeming solid reality of success vanishes from your world, proving itself to be the shadow it always was, and the reality – the light of success – was the idea in you with which you were identified. So if I assume that I am _____ (and I name it) and I remain faithful to it, it comes out and makes itself seemingly real. If I cease to assume it and sustain it, it slowly vanishes from my world, and if it vanishes I might think the reality was there. I have forgotten how to bring Jacob. I have forgotten how to bring him to the Lord.

So here let us remember where Israel is. It’s not in the Near East. Israel is scattered in all the nations of the world, in your mind – that is where he is. And now you have a purpose in this world and if you really love the teaching (as the words are: “Lovest thou me?”) you say you are faithful. “Peter do you love me?” He doesn’t call him Peter by the way, he calls him Simon. He never calls him Peter in any parts of the Bible; He is referred to as Peter, but whenever he is addressed by the central figure of the gospels, he always calls him Simon, and Simon means to hear, it means to listen.

Well, have you heard, have you really heard, Simon? Yes. Then do you love what you have heard? Lovest thou me, or what I have told you that I am? I am the thing that I teach, so do you love me? Then feed my sheep. Become ruler of this mind of yours and prove you really love the thing you tell me you have heard. If you have heard it, then you are Simon; and if you have really heard it to the point of acceptance, prove you have accepted it by taking the talent received and expand it. Don’t let the shepherd come and when he asks you for the talent, you say you were afraid and you buried it. Let us not be afraid to actually test the truth of the principles we try to explain here.

So, all these are our truths that we have accepted. Now, some got one, some two, some got five. We have done our best in the past two weeks to give you all that we could within two weeks, unfolded from the Bible. We showed you the Bible as a mystery, that all your members are buried, not in one little book, but in all the books. They are all telling you the story about yourself. How God became you that you may become God. How God died to become man in the sense of forgetting that he was God, as he awoke as man.

Man walking the earth has no knowledge he is God, and the individual who dares to claim that he is, and tells you that you are, is usually condemned by those who appoint themselves as teachers. That is the blind leading the blind, and they will call you arrogant if you dare to even demonstrate the power of the mind. And they will tell you that’s not right – you are taking back from God the thing that belonged to God. You see, they are sound asleep. They don’t realize that God became man for one purpose, that he may have the companionship of sons as Gods. So man must awaken and realize who he really is, and he realizes that by starting first as a servant.

I have given you, I think, a perfect technique to prove that you are a servant. Try it today! If you succeed in the simplest little way of taking an invisible state and making it become a reality, like the job for a friend or even the getting of a hat, or even the finding of the proper apartment, or even the getting of some little thing – you try it. If you lost something, “Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain,” sayeth the Lord, for if it isn’t lost it is scattered now in Israel.

Prove that it isn’t lost. What is it that you have lost? Well, take it in your own mind’s eye and then mentally touch it and mentally appropriate it and feel that you have it, that it is yours now, and remain faithful to that assumption and see if the thing returns. If the thing is recovered, you have proved that you have found Israel (a portion of him anyway) and you know how to take him and clothe him in such tones of reality that you can bring him to the Lord, for the Lord is your own wonderful consciousness. When you say: “I AM,” that is the Lord.

Go tell them I AM hath sent you. So when you walk in the feeling “I am so and so,” it is not seen as yet, but that is something you are bringing to the Lord, and the more you feel it to be real, the more natural it becomes. Then it clothes itself in external facts, but the external fact is not the truth of it. Truth and fact oppose each other. Truth does not depend upon fact.

Truth depends upon the intensity of your imagination. Therefore, if I actually am intense about it, that is true. I might tomorrow find a corresponding fact to bear witness – but, as I said earlier, let me not continue in that assumption and the fact will fade, proving it was not reality at all. Reality was in my assumption, and so truth depends not upon fact, but upon the intensity of imagination.

Then you will understand the drama when truth faces what is called fact or reason, and when asked: what is the truth – truth remains silent. He would not answer because fact or reason thinks that a true judgment must conform to the external reality to which it relates. If I say: “Aren’t these lovely” and I mention something that no one present can see, you say my judgment isn’t true, for if it isn’t on something on the outside.

Then what I say has no reality. I must be suffering from some illusion. If I persist in it, and you cannot see it, then it is hallucination. But I know from experience that I can take an illusion, and through the medium of an illusion I can relate myself to reality or “Is Real” by walking faithful to what you call my illusion. I simply assume a state knowing I have found it; it is scattered in the nations of the world and finding it in myself as a desirable state, I appropriate it. Walking faithful to my appropriated state I gradually become it. Disentangling myself from that state eventually, I cease to be it, for that which requires a state of consciousness to embody itself cannot be embodied without such a state of consciousness.

When I know that the whole thing depends upon my appropriation of the parts of Israel to bring Jacob to my Father, then I will start to do it, and then my talents will run from five to ten and to twenty, and finally when I have all these talents I will be worthy of being a friend. When I have been faithful in a few things, he will make me Lord over much. Then he will tell me: I no longer call you servant. I call you friend, for you did what I commanded you.

Now, having done what I commanded you, you are my friend indeed. We will walk in that association for a while, communing with the deep, knowing the deep of self is my real being that men call God. I won’t see him as another. I will commune with him as though he were another, and he and I will talk across that invisible state just as though man spoke face to face with a friend.

For after this invisible state when I commune with the deep is reached to a point of complete satisfaction, the last seal will be broken. He will break the seal and reveal me as his son, and when I see him and look into his face he will be just like me and I will be like him. Then you will know the mystery of the Epistle of John: “Beloved what manner of love.”

Just imagine what love God has bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God. And then, although at this moment, that I feel it from the deep, I don’t quite know what I am like or what he is like, yet I do know this much: that when I see him I will know him. And why will I know him? Because I’ll be like him. I will look right into the mirror of my own being, and realize it was for that purpose that I, the Father, embodied myself as man, hoping that eventually he would awaken and become a conscious being, moving completely from a passive reflector to a conscious cooperator in my kingdom. So, man gradually moves from the passive state to the active state, and the process is the servant, the friend, the Son.

FOLLOW THE PATTERN

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 03-25-1968

“Man is all Imagination and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God Himself.” (William Blake) We are told that the Bible is the word of God; therefore, if God and man are one, it must be man’s word. Now, a scriptural episode is not a record of an historical event, but a paradoxical revelation of truth. Accept this, even though you may not understand it, for when scripture is experienced, you will know it is literally true!

Paul tells us to follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me. Guard the truth which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit which dwells within us. (II Timothy) Here we are called upon to guard this truth, for only as we follow the pattern – which is the truth – are we saved. If all things are possible to your imagination, and you are all imagination, you should be able to accomplish anything and fulfill every desire. But first you must be willing to believe you are all imagination! It’s entirely up to you. Do you believe you are mortal man – or all imagination?

Living in infinite states, the basic state from which we operate is our body of belief. If you believe you are limited, your thoughts flow from that belief. But if this principle is true, and you place a modification on that body of belief, you should produce a corresponding change, as your outer world is forever reflecting your inner thoughts.

Genesis tells us that the serpent, the symbol of our fall, is the most subtle (often translated as “wisest”) of all of God’s creatures. In Proverbs, the personification of wisdom says: God created me at the beginning of his ways, the first of his acts of old. Then in 1 Corinthians, Christ is defined as the power and wisdom of God. If this is true, then who is the serpent? The churches teach that some strange dragon led man into this world of sin and death. But when you understand scripture you will realize that Jesus Christ (God’s power and wisdom) is the serpent! It is he who brought us into the world of generation, and it is he who redeems us by raising us into the world of regeneration. This I know to be literally true. John tells us: “No one ascends into heaven but he who first descended, even the Son of man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (John 3) Here we see that infinite power and wisdom took the form of man – the limit of contraction, by entering the state called Satan – the limit of opacity. To Satan there is nothing beyond the physical sense of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch, as he is confined to the limit of opacity and contraction.

We are called upon to exercise this power that sacrificed itself and became us. As Blake said: “I know of no other Christianity, no other gospel than the right both of body and mind, to exercise the divine art of Imagination.” By exercising the divine art of imagination, you can prove to yourself that you can go beyond what your eyes, reason, and senses dictate. Exercise this art by daring to assume you are what your reason and senses deny you. Persist, and to the degree you are self-persuaded of its truth, the outer world will change, for it is forever conforming to the belief housed within you.

Infinite power and wisdom took on the form of a person by descending into you. His descent is your capacity to generate here. One day he will turn around and, as the son of man, you will ascend into heaven. But no one can ascend into heaven who has not first descended. He who descended came in the form of a serpent. This I know from experience. You, too, will know this to be true when your body is split from top to bottom, and the furnaces of affliction become fountains of living water. We came here to experience our own, individual furnaces of affliction. But when your spiritual body is split, you become living water springing from humanity, and like a fiery serpent you ascend your spinal cord. The 21st chapter of Numbers tells us: “The Lord God said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set him on a pole and it shall come to pass that everyone who is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live.’” Why? Because he enters into life in himself! This statement, as every little episode in scripture, is a rough sketch, an adumbration, a foreshadowing for time to fulfill in experience.

Now let me share an experience of a friend. In his dream he is constructing a large building, knowing that his father is creating one greater than his. Although he never sees his father, he knows that one day he will be as great as he. Suddenly he sees a black and white tree snake, picks it up and watches it coil around his right arm. Then the snake began to speak, telling him of the husband she loves, but has lost. The scene changes and my friend is now standing on a new building site with a pole standing upright in the center. Ascending the pole is the same snake, who turns around and starts its descent as he awoke. Here is a perfect adumbration, for only that which descends can ever ascend. I know it doesn’t make sense on this level; but just as Moses lifted up creative power in the wilderness, so have I, as the Son of man, been lifted up. How? In the form of a serpent! The creative power of Imagination descended by turning his head down into generation. His power, now reflecting in this world, must be reversed. This cannot be done by any conscious effort. The reversal takes place when the spiritual body is split in two from top to bottom. Seeing the fountain of living water, your creative power fuses with it, and up you go into heaven, just like a serpent. Blake described this as: “The furnaces of affliction suddenly become fountains of living water, all springing from humanity.” Everyone is destined to enter that fountain of living water, rise from this level into which he descended, and understand the words of Blake: “I do not consider the strong man, the weak man, the rich man or the poor man, to be in an ideal, supreme state, but to be everyone of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it left paradise following the serpent.”

In the third chapter of Genesis, wisdom (the serpent) speaks, saying: “Did God say you would die? You will not surely die.” And in that same chapter God declares: “Behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Now, knowing good and evil, the serpent promised that if you would descend and partake of this knowledge, you would awaken like the gods. Simply automatons, knowing nothing, you lived in a dreamlike state until infinite wisdom said: Follow me. So you left the world of innocence, and entered the world of experience to return to the world of Imagination, from whence you started. And when you return, you are all Imagination, and nothing is impossible to you. But before you do, you can test your creative power knowingly. Do you know someone who is in need? Bring him before your mind’s eye and see his need fulfilled. Lose yourself in the thrill, the feeling of joy for your friend. Do nothing on the outside to make it so, simply persist in seeing him in his new state, and no power on earth can stop it from being so. If you think he can oppose you, you are looking at the world of Satan, for there is no physical other. God is one. There is no opposition save that which you create for yourself!

Try to follow the pattern of these words which you have received from me. It is the same pattern as recorded by Paul, as the same God who revealed his Son in Paul revealed his Son in me, revealing me as the Father. Paul knew he was God the Father when he said: “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me.” This truth comes from revelation; so, like Paul, I am asking everyone to follow the pattern of the true words which you have heard from me, for I have experienced scripture and know it is not secular history. The stories of scripture are paradoxical revelations of truth, which happen naturally. The golden liquid light you see is the living water which you become as you merge with it. Then, as a living fountain, you ascend from humanity in a serpentine motion.

Now, another friend wrote saying she found herself in the depths of the earth, in a cave whose walls were hewn out of rock. The only object present was a jar with a human face carved upon it. As she became aware of moving in and out of the jar, she realized that the jar itself was a head with its top removed. Returning to investigate, she found it empty, and awoke. Again I go back to Blake: “He has a sepulcher hewn out of a Rock ready for thee. And a death of eight thousand years which he has forged for thyself.” Blake saw the sepulcher forged out of rock, ready to receive the death of eight thousand years. In Blake’s symbology 8000 does not necessarily mean years. Eight is resurrection, a new beginning. The Sabbath is the seventh day, the day prepared to lead one up to the eighth day, called resurrection.

This lady entered the sepulcher in which Man is placed, to meet the one who sent her, who is the Lord of the air! Blake, whose works are all vision, said: “God Himself enters death’s door with all who enter, and lays down in the grave with him in visions of eternity until they awake.” So her vision was perfect, as it parallels those of Blake. The Book of Mark begins: “Repent.” That’s revision! That’s changing your thinking, thereby changing your belief, which causes a corresponding change in your world. In this lady’s vision, she reminded herself to revise now and not put it off until a later date. This is so true! Imagining creates reality, for waiting will cause you to find the problem more difficult to overcome, so change it the moment you sense it. Always revise now! Let me repeat. You are destined to awaken as God! Although the serpent – the symbol of your redemption – seems to have betrayed you, he has led you from innocence to experience, to one grand Awakened Human Imagination.

Learn to adore your humanity, your spirit of life! Worship God by worshipping your own wonderful Human Imagination! You want to love God? Love your own spirit, for he is Christ. Remove humanity from you and you will not exist, so learn to adore your humanity, for that is your spirit of life. You may not be able to draw a straight line, yet you can create a smile on the face of a friend, or erase the lines of worry or age. You can do all these things, not by turning to another, but by using your creative power, the only God! Blake makes this statement: “Thou art a Man, God is no more, thine own Humanity learn to adore.” Humanity is your spirit of life! Turn to the only God, who is your own wonderful Human Imagination! Learn to adore him. All things are possible to God, therefore, all things are possible to imagine! Knowing what you want, ask yourself if you believe that your imaginal acts are committed by God. I tell you, they are!

In his 14th chapter, John tells you that imagination is his spirit of life, saying: “You believe in God? Believe also in me.” Can you believe your imaginal acts will come to pass? That your desire is real, and live as though it were? If you imagine – and imagining does create reality – you will see your desire appear in your world. If it does not, then you have proved that the principle is false. I tell you the principle is true – according to your belief! There is no limit placed on your ability to believe or on what belief can accomplish. No matter what you desire, when you believe you have received it, you will. Can you believe that the only true God is in you? That you can follow the pattern of the sound words you have heard from me? I urge you to guard this truth which has been revealed to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Don’t look for any Holy Spirit on the outside! There is no one to run to but self, for everything is within you!

Now let me share another experience of the man who had the dream of the pole and the serpent. He said: “I wanted to make more money, but I did not feel qualified for a better position. Regardless of this fact, I decided that I wanted to earn twice as much as I was presently making, and I imagined having it now! Within two weeks I was contacted for an interview. In the past, I have had to sell myself, but this time the company was urging me to take the position offered, which included a salary greater than double the present one. Strangely enough, the man who had recommended me was a man who formerly worked for me, and when he left, there was intense dislike on both our parts. After the interview we met on the outside, and when I told him of my fears he said, ‘I know you are the best man for the job.’”

I tell you: there is only one cause, and that is the Human Imagination. When you change your body of beliefs, everyone must and will play their part to produce evidence of that change in you. One who was formerly an enemy will play the part of a friend. I thank my friend for sharing this story with me and urge you to follow his example. Dream nobly! Think of lovely things you want to recall, and you will experience them in your tomorrows.

Blake was so awake! It was he, who said: “Everything is Man. The lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant, mule, dove, fly and worm, all are glorious persons. Clothed in gems, they fly away to humanize in the forgiveness of sins according to thy covenant, O Jehovah.” Awakened Imagination knows there is nothing but God, and God, being Man, becomes the worm to feed the weak. Knowing there is nothing but Imagination, Blake said:

“Double the vision my eyes do see.
Double vision is always with me.
With my inner eye it is an old man gray,
with my outer a thistle across the way.”

Every day, with my old friend Abdullah I would practice this art. At dinner he would ask me to look at the lampshade. He didn’t mean for me to see the lampshade – anyone can do that – but to focus my attention through it. Looking beyond, I would see living, breathing human faces. Other times he would ask me to look at a car, a house, a wall – not with my outer eyes but with my inner eye; and when I did, I would always see Man. When I first began to do this I had to break it, because I could feel myself moving through and beyond this world, to see an entirely different world. That’s Imagination!

Although this world seems to be the only reality, it is but a gossamer dream. And when you leave here, you will once more feel that where you are is the only reality. This you will do over and over again until God’s pattern of salvation unfolds in you. Then you will follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me and guard the truth which will be imparted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells in all. He has revealed salvation’s pattern to me. Having entrusted me with that truth, I have told it and will continue to do so until I can tell it no more. Then someone else will pick it up and continue the pattern.

The Bible, from beginning to end, is simply a book of patterns. Claiming there is only one source of all dreams, who is God, the story is told of a man called Joseph, the dreamer who was placed in a coffin in Egypt. So who was placed in that coffin, but God! It is God who descends and takes upon himself this concrete, opaque state called Joseph. It is recorded that Joseph was the third son of Jacob, born to him in his old age. And Jacob was the son of his mother’s old age. And Jacob’s father was the son of his mother’s old age. Do you see the pattern repeating itself over and over again here?

This book of patterns will unfold in each one of us. How long it will be before the pattern unfolds in you, individually, only your heavenly Father knows. I can tell you this, however: it will happen in your old age! When you have had all of the experiences life here can give you and you seem to be barren, the child will come. That is my promise!

Now let us go into the silence.

FOURFOLD VISION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 01-26-1968

William Blake once wrote these words to his friend, Thomas Butts:

“Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me:
‘Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold always, may God us keep
From single vision and Newton’s sleep!”

Fourfold vision is to single vision as ordinary sight is to blindness. We all experience single and threefold vision. It’s twofold and fourfold vision that one must consciously work to achieve.

A hardheaded, common-sensed, rational man sees with his single vision. To him, a man is a man, a tree is a tree, a rose is a rose, and a dog is a dog. The idea that imagination could create reality would be sheer nonsense to him, and he would think you mad if you tried to tell him so. Being rational, the single-vision man lives in a world where things are what they seem to be. In that world everything can be weighed and measured, a minute is sixty seconds, and a pound is sixteen ounces – no more or no less. Blake refers to that kind of man as Newton’s sleep, saying: “May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep.”

Twofold vision occurs when everything is seen as an image. I have stood before a fireplace and enjoyed its warmth and light. I have watched the flames leap up and subside, fall into embers, then turn into ash and – to all appearances – vanish. And I have said to myself: “My life is like a fire.” At that moment I achieved a simile. I didn’t stop there, however, but said: “Life is fire. My life is fire.” Having achieved a metaphor, I dropped the “is” and said to myself, “Life and fire are similar. I will never again see one and not see the other, or feel one and not imagine the other.” At that moment I had achieved a symbol, a poetic image. Fire is now an image which reminds me of life.

Verdi once said: “All things transient are but images.” Is there anything here that is not transient? I have a friend who recently discovered two love birds had nested near his window, with three eggs in their nest. My friend now has fourteen days of waiting for them to hatch out. They will come forth, much to his pleasure, wax, wane, and then vanish. They, like all things transient, are but symbols; and if you will but turn the object seen into its symbol, twofold vision will be yours.

Mr. [William] Hayley, a man who thought himself a poet (although only a few of his pieces that Blake illustrated have survived) was a man of considerable wealth. He gave Blake a home with a beautiful garden, for him, his wife, and sister to live in. One day Blake found a drunken soldier stretched out in his garden. When the man refused to leave Blake took him by the elbows and marched him out of the garden.

Now a garden does not just happen. Man must be present to transform a plot into a garden, which must be planted and cared for or it will go to seed. Blake saw the drunken soldier (one of the forces) as the symbol of his spiritual enemy, yet physical friend. You see, although Mr. Hayley had fed and sheltered Blake he wanted no part of his poetry or artistic work, so he was Blake’s spiritual enemy. Of him Blake wrote: “I can tolerate my physical enemy, but not my spiritual one, for he destroys my creative power.”

Blake saw everything in his life as a symbol. To him the sun was not a round disk in the sky, but a host of angels singing: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” Always thinking in symbols, twofold vision was always his.

Threefold vision is yours when the images begin to dream, to have love affairs, marry, and beget. Your dreams of the day and night are threefold vision, which Blake calls “soft Beulah’s night”. Your moods are your dreams in daylight, forming a threefold vision. Capture a mood which would imply the fulfillment of your desire, then become so intense in that threefold vision that you enter your fulfilled desire, and you will move into fourfold vision.

Having entered this dream of life, man has forgotten where he laid himself down to sleep. Thoreau once said: “The truest life is to be in a dream, awake.” Once this world was only a dream, but man became so intense, he awoke in his dream and turned to single vision in place of reality.

Now, this world has become the stream of reality. Knowing this, start to assemble images in your mind that, if true, would imply the fulfillment of your desire. Let the images play together, interweave, fall in love, and reach fulfillment.

Let me illustrate by telling a story which a friend recently shared with me. For some time he had an objective problem which he did nothing about, imaginatively. Then one day while in his office, he constructed a scene which if true would imply that the problem had been solved and his desire fulfilled. He ran through the scene several times in his mind, then entered it to rehearse the voices and scenery there. Breaking his concentration, he finished work and returned to his home. That night he again entered the scene, and as it became alive he fell asleep and had this dream.

He was a disembodied observer of a party given to congratulate a young man who had just come into a great fortune. Congratulating the young man he asked: “How did you accomplish this?” And the man replied in a most embarrassing way: “It was so easy. I simply did what I should have done a long time ago.” Upon hearing this statement, my friend entered into the spirit of that young man and felt his embarrassment and unworthiness. Then once again becoming the observer, he heard the young man say: “It was not a vicarious thrill. Entering the state, I actually experienced the sensation.”

My friend seemed to be observing someone else – but there is no one else! Humanity is a single being, in spite of its millions of forms and figures. There is seeming separation, as divined in our own being when we were dramatically sundered, thereby causing a seeming other to play the part we wrote for ourselves. My friend wrote the script and played the parts by entering into a fourfold vision. In so doing, he carried it into his own intensity.

We are all asunder, as every being is self, made visible. You have given yourself every individual in your world as an image, and you alone know what he represents.

A friend saw his mother as an image of the material world. A wonderful mystical experience followed this realization, when my friend found himself, as a young man, standing in a suite of rooms looking out to sea. Having written a letter to his mother, he opened the front door to find a lady standing there. Then he said: “I was going to mail this letter to my mother, but now I remember that she is dead.” The lady agreed saying: “Yes, she died a long, long time ago.” This statement surprised him, for in our measure of time it had only been a few months. Then he asked: “Hasn’t my mother been paying for these rooms?” And the lady replied: “No. The undertaker has. He felt it better that you think she was providing for you until you awoke and came to your senses.”

This gentleman is on the verge of complete wakening into an entirely different age. No one knows the day it will happen. He will not depart, however, one hour before his time, neither can he delay it one hour. Scripture tells us: “Who, by taking thought can add one hour to his span of time?”

You need not be anxious, because you cannot postpone or hasten your departure, in spite of heart transplants and life-extending diets. You will notice, however, that all the dietitians, doctors, and health addicts do not live one hour longer than those who are not!

I have a friend in Barbados who, during prohibition was so drunk I had to pour him on a boat for the mainland. This man would drink anything that contained alcohol. Now a man in his eighties, he is still drinking as far as I know, while all of the doctors who warned him that if he continued it would kill him are now dead. He only vegetates today, having lost his sight, but he is learning his lesson in his own way. God, the Father in him, is dreaming his dream of life. One day he will come to his senses and realize that the world is but himself pushed out.

In each one of us God the Father awakes, for He is one, not two. It is Christ who is dreaming and it is Christ who awakens in this gentleman and this lady, in that gentleman and that lady, as the one Father. He awakens as the one who begot the dream. Therefore there is only one body, one Spirit, One Lord, one God and Father of all. So you see: this fourfold vision is within the experience of all.

Everyone has experienced single vision, but everything in this world started as a dream. The room you are in began as a dream in the mind of someone. Its plans were executed in the mind of another. Now it has entered the stream of reality we call fact, yet it is still a dream; for its origin was a dream and its end is a dream, as all things bring forth after their kind.

If you have a desire to supplant what you have now, you must start by assuming it is a dream. And when it objectifies itself and enters the stream of reality, may I tell you: it will still be dream. Imagination is the creative power which can cause that which was not, to be! It can also cause that which is, not to be; therefore, it not only creates, but un-creates. This power is God.

My friend knows this law and has applied it beautifully time and time again; yet we are all careless and often think a problem will take care of itself, but it will not. The power to change anything will lie dormant unless we operate it, as Imagination does not operate itself.

Begin now to practice the art of imagining every day. A concert pianist must constantly practice. for if he does not and he is called upon to give a concert he would not be ready. You must practice the art of imagining day after day so that when you are faced with a problem you will not put it aside, but will do something about it and move from soft Beulah’s night into fourfold vision. Blake confessed that his greatest ecstasy was in fourfold vision because it is the fulfillment of scripture, of which he was a great student.

In the 13th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, we are told: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” If you want something, it is not going to come into being by saying: “I will have it some day.” That is deferring your hope and making your heart sick. But if you believe that imagining creates reality, you will build a stage, paint the scenery, and place lovely images there. Then you will let them interweave so that when you bring that scenery back into your mind, the actors will come alive and say the words you had dictated for them to say.

The scene’s power is in its implication. In my friend’s case the young man was being congratulated because something very important had happened in his life and it had been so easily accomplished.

A few years ago a friend had a few skin cancers on his face. The doctor would give him no more radiation, so every day as my friend shaved he saw his face clear of all blemishes. Today he cannot remember when they disappeared, but they are now gone, with no trace of ever having been present. So Imagination can not only bring things into being, it can take things away! It can un-create whatever it creates.

In this wonderful world we have created nightmares which we cannot endure forever, so they will have to be uncreated. That is why I urge everyone to live nobly. Sow your mind with ideas worthy of recall, because the day is coming when that which is built on any foundation other than Christ will be consumed or uncreated. You will survive, but only as through fire.

We bring all kinds of unpleasant things into our world and live with them until we discover we can un-create them. Just as my friend uncreated the blemishes he had placed there and he cannot tell you the moment they disappeared. You have the power to create and un-create. Having brought something unlovely into your world, you can un-create it if you are willing to create something in its place, and persist until your desire becomes fourfold.

This world, although three dimensional, is fourfold, for your dream has caused the world to enter the stream of reality. At this moment I am looking at you singly and in a threefold manner. If I see you as an image, representing other than what you appear to be, I am seeing you twofold. And when I meet you in soft Beulah’s night I will understand what you are trying to tell me in my fourfold dream.

A friend told me that I represent Christ to him. That when he conjures me in his dreams, he knows that the image of God’s power and wisdom is speaking to him through the voice of his friend called Neville. Neville is only a symbol, as he should be. I am a symbol and everyone sees me differently, for I am in every being just as you are, for God is one. Now fragmented, the world is God made visible and God’s name forever and ever is I AM!

The next time you see a fire in the fireplace think of it as the symbol of life. Achieve a poetic image by never seeing one and not thinking of the other. As you look at the fire and feel its warmth something will begin to stir within you, and from then on twofold vision will be yours.

Start with one image and it will become two, then four, then eight as everything will form an image in your mind. Blake saw everything as an image. To the world Scofield was a lonely soldier asleep in a garden. But, because Blake’s garden was the image of his creativity, finding a sleeping, drunken soldier there was like finding him in his wife’s bed, so Blake removed him. Although a very small man in stature, Blake had the courage of a giant, and removed that which was the symbol of his spiritual enemy.

Start now to experiment with these four types of vision. Unless you are physically blind you have single vision. When you see another meaning to that which appears to be, you are beginning to have twofold vision. This world is threefold, and when you imagine something other than that which you are now tied to and occupy it, the thrill of fourfold vision will be yours. Then when you sit down to prepare your dream, its occupants and scenery will become alive, their voices will be heard, their friendly touch felt, and fourfold vision will be your supreme delight!

Do not expect your desire to be fulfilled overnight, for all things have an interval of time between their planting and their entrance into the stream of life called reality. But I urge you to practice, practice, and continue to practice, for you are moving into a world where all is Imagination and you will create at will. You won’t have to travel by any worldly means to visit Europe, Asia, or any foreign country, for everything and every means necessary to objectify your thought is within you.

Truly, you have never left your eternal home. You are sleeping there, dreaming this world into being. Before falling asleep you were called a prince and told that you were gods, sons of the Most High. You would however die like men and fall as one man.

Now, in order to be a prince, you father must be a king. Well, your Father is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and together we form the one Lord, for God is one. We descended in consciousness, and made our dreams so real by entering into the stream that they took on the tones of reality.

As our eye opened upon the scene, single vision caused us to become locked in the prison of our senses and reason. Now we have become practical, down-to-earth, hardheaded men who know that life is a battle and we must take advantage of everyone before he takes advantage of us.

We pile up our millions, and then the Father says it’s time to go; so we slip off this little garment to put on another – just like this one, only young, with nothing missing. There, we continue our single vision until we come to our senses and awaken.

The man with single vision thinks the great mother earth is paying the rent and providing for him. The undertaker will allow him to think so until he awakens and comes to his senses.

Do not postpone your dreams and do not think that because you heard what to do, your desires will come to pass. It’s so easy to hear the truth and postpone the doing. But I urge you to be like my friend: stop postponing and do what you want to have done, for if you do, it will come to pass.

Now let us go into the silence.

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