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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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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

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 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.

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“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 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.

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.

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.

He Is Dreaming Now

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

Tonight’s title is: “He is Dreaming Now.” God’s name―His real presence―is within us, in the very midst of us, for His real presence is concentrate in His name.

“Come, let us go and look at him,” said the brothers, and each took one of Alice’s hands and led her up to where the king was sleeping.

“He is dreaming now.” said Tweedle-Dee, “and what do you think he is dreaming about?”

Alice said, “Why, nobody could guess that.”

Then Tweedle-Dee said, “He is dreaming about you; and if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?” (from “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll)

Now, to us, that seems a fairy story; and, yet, it is so altogether true. If the Dreamer in you left off dreaming anything that you now entertain, where do you think you would be? Is not the Dreamer and the “I” of waking a pair of identical twins?

We think this is the real world, and then we speak of the “dream world.” To us, that isn’t real, and yet we are told in Scripture: “God speaks to us through the medium of dreams, and makes Himself known through vision.” (Numbers 12:6) And, yet, we say that is not real, and yet: “God speaks to man through the medium of dreams”; and He is the Dreamer in man, identical with the “I” of waking.

When we really wake, we will not be God and man. It will just be you; and you will be God, who was the Dreamer. The whole will simply awaken within you. it will not be a twin. The wall of separation will be broken down. It will only be God; and God-and-you will be the One.

“God becomes as I am, that I may be as He is.” (from “There Is No Natural Religion” by William Blake)

When the promise was made that God and an Angel would lead Israel, this promise was given special force by Jehovah’s assurance that “My name is in him.” That is, Jehovah Himself would lead them. Well, who is Jehovah? In Scripture we are told His name really is “I AM.”

“Go, say to them that I AM hath sent me unto you…This is my name forever, and by this name I will be known throughout all generations.” (Exodus 3:14-15) “There is no other name.” (Acts 4:2)

Now, here in this room―take this simple little object here. My simple apprehension of this corporeal object we call sense. It is now a “sense” object. It is “real,” for I can see it, I can touch it; if I strike it, I can hear it. So, this is called “sense” because it’s present. If absent, it’s imagination.

What I want to teach everyone who will listen to me is to tell them―to convince them―that the so-called “absent” states are just as real as the present states. If man, the spectator, could only enter into these so-called “absent” states―these images in his imagination,–“approach them on the fiery chariot of his own contemplative thought” (from “A Vision of the Last Judgment” by William Blake)―if he could enter into these states and give to the state the sensory vividness that he now gives to this, and give it all to his imagination; if he could give it all the tones of reality we now give to this, using our senses, it would clothe itself in what we call “objective” reality.

Here in this audience tonight there is a gentleman. He started a business in Chicago in March of this year. If you knew the market in the month of March as you know it today, it was at the lowest point in years. Stocks tumbled and tumbled day after day, many dropping ten or fifteen points a day; and on paper billions and billions were lost. As far as the mind goes, they were lost. There was no market to raise money for business. He needed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to launch this business. It is a manufacturing business, manufacturing special instruments―technical. No one had any money,–no individual, no group.

He went through the month of March, April; and then in May he called me from Chicago to tell me he was too close to picture. He couldn’t use his imagination because he was too close to it, and all the negative arguments the papers gave you, the brokers gave you, friends would give you,–everything printed that the financial situation gave you looked forward to a greater and greater depression. He couldn’t stop it. So, I heard what he had to say: he wanted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I said, “All right, I will hear it for you. I will now reverse the entire conversation from you wanting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a conversation that tells me that you have your two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and I will persuade myself of this so-called ‘invisible,’ and therefore unreal state. When I am self-persuaded of the reality of what the world would say to be unreal, it’s done, and it will not fail! I will do it now.”

So, he hung up. I did not leave the ‘phone until I was self-persuaded that he had called me and told me of the good news that he had his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to launch this new venture in these special things that he is making.

Well, he is here in the room tonight, and last night he gave me a letter setting forth the highlights of this entire state. I have given you the first three: it was incorporated in the month of March. The need was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. March and April went by; and in May he didn’t panic, but everyone simply turned him down. There was no such thing as a money market.

Then he called me, and I’ve told you the exact conversation between the two of us. He is here in this City now; and in this statement he said: “Out of the blue, a broker called me and told me he heard of this new venture, he had investigated it, examined it, and he would like to underwrite it for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” which he agreed to.

As he agreed to have this company underwrite it for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, friends then called and asked if they could buy a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of shares when he had shares to sell; and to that, he agreed.

So, his need was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and he has raised between the call in May and this day three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And they say because of the market, because of this, or because of that, it can’t be done.

“All things are possible to God” (Matthew 19:26), but man worships a false god. Man hasn’t the slightest concept who God is! “God is not a God afar off”; God is not even near, for nearness implies separation. And He is in the very midst of me. He is my own true identity! My own I-AM-ness,–that’s God! He actually, literally became as I am with all of my weaknesses―with all of my limitations, that I may be as He is without limitations, without weakness. So, He is not pretending that He is me. He is not pretending that He is you. He literally emptied Himself of His infinite wisdom and power, and assumed the restrictions of man; and then finally He awakes within man, and Man is the one that awakes within Him. God and man are One. That little line of demarcation between the two when man in his dream worships a false god is all removed, and then hen knows who God really is.

So, He’s dreaming now―dreaming your life. One day He will awake from the dream of life, and then you will know Who-You-Are! You will know that you are that central figure in Scripture called the Lord Jesus Christ, for the name will unfold itself within you, and the ultimate revelation of that name is “God the Father”! And because He is God the Father, you will see His son in your presence calling you, “Father.” You will know you are his father, and he will know that he is your son, and there will be no uncertainty as to this relationship between you and the Son of God, whose Son is your son.

Now, until it happens, test it. We are invited to test Him. “Come, test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” (Second Corinthians 13:5, Revised Standard Version)

Does man realize it? If he is honest with himself, he will say, “No, I don’t realize it.” But nevertheless, he is invited to test it to see if he really is in him. Why? Because “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3)

Well, if that is true and someone tells me that my own wonderful human imagination is God, and that what is imagined is as real as what my senses now dictate; that I can give to that unseen state a reality that will project itself upon the screen of space and become as real as anything now on the screen of space, and share that reality with others, can I do it? Well, I did it in this case. I did morning, noon and night; and I am not different from any person born of woman. I have found the True God!

As we are told: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Joshua answered himself: “I have chosen the Lord, I and my household.” (Joshua 24:15) Then Israel said, “We, too, will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:18) He said, “You are witnesses against yourselves. You will serve the Lord?” (Joshua 24:22)

You cannot bow your knee before anything in this world when you have chosen the True God. The True God is within you, and that Being within you is your own wonderful human imagination.

Now, give to your imaginal acts tones of reality, and see how they project themselves in your world and become real. But if they do it and it will become a fact, well reason tells them, No, it would have happened anyway.

A friend of mine, my dentist, bought his home seventeen years ago. It was his first home. he got it for twenty thousand dollars in the hills of Hollywood. It was a lovely home; it was once owned by Kaiser’s son. In fact, I think he built it. it was very, very big, nicely constructed; not a large area, but―oh, what a view! A beautiful view. He did improve it somewhat; he put in a swimming pool and made a few structural changes, but he didn’t spend in excess of ten thousand dollars in the seventeen years that he lived there in making certain changes. That meant he had a home of thirty thousand dollars.

Then came the present moment that he wanted to unload it; but, like all people, they read the papers and make concepts of what a thing is valued at. He paid twenty and spent ten; but he lived there, and naturally he paid taxes and these things, but he didn’t have rent to pay. So, he began to put more and more value on the house, and he finally got it to seventy-five thousand dollars. That’s what he wanted for it.

Then he spoke to me about it. I said: “I haven’t the slightest concept of the value of a home. the only home that I have called ‘my home’ was really my Mother’s home. I left home when I was seventeen and a half; it was the only home I’ve ever really felt was home, for I’ve only rented since then. I have rented apartments, rented homes; but they have never been my ‘home.’ So, I have no concept of the value of these homes. You are asking seventy-five thousand for it.”

Well, for one solid year he gave it up to this party, to that party, to the other party; they all showed it, but no one came up with anything near seventy-five thousand. I said to him one day at the pool, “Do you really want to sell it?”

He said, “Deep down in my heart, no. it has been a lovely home.”

I said, “Do you sleep in it every night? I know you do physically, but do you sleep elsewhere in your imagination, and view this home from that assumed state? Well, if you had sold it, you couldn’t sleep in it,–you would have sold it. And if you sold it, you would be sleeping elsewhere; and because you had had the experience of this house, you would view it from the place that you now occupy, and see it as something you had formerly owned that is now owned by someone else. If tonight you sleep in a state other than this state and view this house from that state, you will sell it. But you must, first of all, want to sell it. You want to let it go.”

Well, the husband wanted to sell it. I said, “Where would you go?”

“Well, at our age we would not get another home. We’d move into an apartment. It would be cramped for us, but nevertheless we would move into an apartment.”

So, they went down to see the Le Brea apartments, and they saw one they liked on the tenth floor, and it was just the answer to their prayer, but they wouldn’t move unless they sold.

I said, “Well, now, sleep there tonight. You’ve seen the place. You can’t take all of this furniture, but you are going to take the best pieces; you’ll make a lovely job of it, and you will sleep in that place. There are two bedrooms and two baths, and it is adequate for the two of you. You have no offspring. You can’t take your animals there. That, I do know. So, you will have to let go of the dogs, let go of the turtle, let go of the parrot,–let go of all these things that you have around you. You will find homes for them. But you must sleep there tonight and view this home from that place.”

A total stranger, within the month,–no agent came,–a total stranger [he didn’t have to pay an agent] came and saw it, like it, and paid him in cash to get out within thirty days. Now he is in the new apartment where I saw him and dined with him just about a month ago. He unloaded the house within one month at seventy-five thousand dollars in cash; and this is supposed to be a depressed market where you can’t find people with cash because all the things have gone down. He found it!

You will find it first in your imagination. That’s where you find it. And then you clothe it with the tones of reality, and you clothe it with all the sensory vividness that you can give that image.

“If the spectator could enter into these images in his imagination, approaching [that image] on the fiery chariot of his [own] contemplative thought, [as if he made] a friend and a companion of one of these images,…then he would rise from his grave,”―Well, this is a grave,–“then he would be happy in it [his new choice, his new state].” (from “A Vision of the Last Judgment” by William Blake)

So, in one month he sold it for the seventy-five thousand and moved out. He had to give up half of the things he had, because he couldn’t use them in the smaller area. Now in seventeen years you know, if you have a home or even an apartment, what you accumulate. We accumulate and accumulate like a pack rat! Well, that’s what he did. Now he has this lovely apartment, and he’s blissfully happy, so he tells me.

So, my friend here tonight, he got his three hundred and fifty thousand, and Jim unloaded his home that he only paid twenty for, for seventy-five thousand. I don’t question people’s right to ask seventy-five thousand or a hundred thousand or a million. I only ask that they do it within the frame of the Golden Rule. Would you have it done unto you? Well, then, you can do it.

When I start a business―I have no desire to start a business; but if I had a desire to start a business and it needed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I wouldn’t’ think that strange. I would go into a bank, if I had confidence in what I could do, and try to raise the money. Well, he couldn’t raise it. But, “out of the blue,” a broker now underwrites the whole thing for two hundred and fifty thousand. And then friends want to buy; and they have investigated the nature of the business, and they want to buy another hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock, which he agreed to. He has this three hundred and fifty thousand pledged.

So, I say the Dreamer in man is God, and He is the dreamer,–not one with the “I” of waking. The “I” that wakes is confined to the senses, and he thinks this is the real world, and he rationalizes everything in the world; when, really, everything you see in the outer world was first only an image in the imagination. There isn’t a thing that is now true as fact that was not once only imagination―not a thing in the world. Every external so-called concrete fact has a spiritual cause, and not a so-called physical cause. The physical cause only seems; it is a delusion of the fading memory.

Now today, even after a month, Jim now thinks that it didn’t happen because he slept in his apartment before he physically occupied it. He thinks it would have happened anyway. Well, he thinks, now this man―out of the blue―he heard of this thing―he wanted to get away from Bel Aire,–he wanted to leave that environment and come to the hills of Hollywood all by himself because the place is all alone right up on the very top of these mountains. Now he justifies it, and he thinks that this thing would have happened anyway, “in spite of what Neville said.” And it’s only a month!

Well, you give him six more months and he’ll be convinced beyond a doubt that what he did in imagination and what his wife did had no bearing whatsoever upon the sale. But that is the story told throughout the Bible.

“Were there not ten of you, and only one has returned to say thanks?” (See Luke 17:14-18) Well, the other nine thought it would have happened anyway. No, not a thing could cure them of their leprosy; and one spoke and it became a fact. And he kept on going. It wasn’t done because he did it,–it would have happened anyway.

That’s what the nine said, but one Samaritan came back and said, Thank you. That’s the whole vast world in which we live. We are so sound asleep, we could never believe in these irrational things of which I speak. “Why, that doesn’t make sense!”

I could tell you unnumbered stories where I know the cause. I know the beginning―the conversation that took place, and the kind of a prayer that took place, where they didn’t beg anyone in the world for anything. You don’t turn to any god on the outside and appeal to him to help you. You turn to the inside, and you appropriate what you want. It is a subjective appropriation of the objective hope.

What do I want in the object world? I hope for that. Well, I must now subjectively appropriate that state. I don’t beg for it. I simply appropriate it. if God is my own wonderful human imagination, to whom can I turn? I turn to God by, in my own imagination, appropriating this state. That is what I am told to do.

“When you pray, believe that you have received, and you will.” (Mark 11:24) And whoever says a thing, believing that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Well, is He not speaking to me? Is He not telling me that He dwells within me?

“I dwell in you, and you dwell in me, and we are one. And the things that I have done, you will do also.”

Well, what have you done? I have found the Father. Who is he? He said, “I am the Father.” I am going to find that, too, for that is what I am told. “All the things that I have done, ye shall do, and even greater than these because I go and leave the world. I am returning to my Father, from whom I came; and so you will remain here until you reach the end of the journey.” Not at the end of history, but within history, you will know the truth of the things that I say, for you will know the Father; and when you know the Father, you’ll know yourself because you are the Father!

Well, if He tells me that, do I believe it? Or, is He a liar? Well, I know from my own personal experience that it is all true. The whole thing is true. The truest story ever told is the story of the life of Jesus Christ; but it’s not as the world believes it. It hasn’t a thing to do with a man in time. It has all to do with that Supernatural Being in you, Who unfolds Himself within you as you. And, then, you know Who-You-Are. And you are the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every child born of woman has that Being within that child. The true identity of the child is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God the Father. But while we are here in the world of Caesar, exercise the talent that He gave us. He gave us Himself. That talent is to exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of others, on behalf of yourself.―don’t neglect yourself; but certainly on behalf of others. Anytime you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you have literally mediated God to that “other.” Well, God was your own wonderful human imagination. And, so, when you began to imagine lovely things about another, and you became persuaded that the thing imagined is true, you have mediated God to another. And then he will come to you if he has any heart within him and say, “Thanks.” My friend said to me, “Thanks.” All I ask of him,–not one penny; I don’t want a nickel,–I would like to know that it happened.

Now, it could have happen and he could have left this City and not have told me one word. But, no; he was big enough to write it out on his own paper, for he is the president of the corporation; and the paper bears his signature. He didn’t dictate it to a secretary; he wrote it in longhand and signed it himself. So, I have his own record giving the seven stages; the incorporation in March of 1970; with no funds in April, none in May; and the telephone call to me in Los Angeles from Chicago; and then in the month of July to raise “out of the blue”―that is his expression―“out of the blue” came this broker and underwrote the thing for two hundred and fifty thousand; and then friends asked,–he didn’t persuade the friends,–they asked dot let them have a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the stock when he was selling stock in the new company.

So, I tell you, the Dreamer-in-you, as Lewis Carroll put it in this lovely poem, “Through the Looking Glass,”―and what a marvelous name for it! It is truly the “looking glass.” She went right through it into a world just as real as this. You go right through the image and occupy the image. You can sit right here now and assume that you are elsewhere. Your body is here, but you are only occupying this body for a moment.

You are all imagination, and you must be wherever you are in imagination. And the whole thing is done by a motion in mind. The motion on the outside is under compulsion. The causative motion is within the mind. So, I move from where I am physically to where I would like to be physically; and if I really do the motion―if I really succeed, how would I know? Well, then, look at the world. Would I see it from there? I should. Well, then, view the world from that assumption. I should see the whole vast world from that position in space if I have assume that I am there. At his very moment I assume that I am now in New York City, standing at a certain spot in the City; close my eyes to the obvious, and then think of San Francisco. Well, I should see it three thousand miles to the west of me. I should see it away beyond where I am standing if I am standing, in my imagination, in New York City.

Well, what would that do to me? That motion in mind would compel a physical motion to correspond to it; and you will awake to find the whole thing is changed. The whole structure of your world has changed, your plans have changed; and it will compel that physical journey. And you will walk across a bridge of incident―some series of events that you do not consciously plan. You will be compelled to make the journey. I speak from experience.

Back in 1941, when my Mother died, I had no idea Mother was that sick, for I lived in America, and she with the rest of my family lived in Barbados. And, so, they never told me how sick Mother was. She had been sick for two years, and I didn’t know it. Always these lovely letters. First of all, the War was on―not our country, but Britain was at war beginning in September of 1939. That was a British possession, and so there was no contact with little Barbados, save a slow freight taking mail. And here, I didn’t realize it, and I had no plans to go to Barbados. I had planned to go to Maine for a vacation of a month. My wife and I even sent off and made the reservations to go to this place in Maine. Then one day in the month of August I received a letter from my brother, and he said; “Mother is dying. There is no possibility of saving her; and I know it’s difficult to get passage to come here; but if you can, she want to see all of her children around that bed of hers before she dies. If you can possibly make it, try and make it.”

We sailed the very next day on the Argentina. It sailed at midnight; and without getting passports or anything, we simply rushed aboard. We bought the ticket, and we got it. We were in such a hurry, I didn’t even get my return passage. I didn’t get any papers. Finally, I had to get them from the U.S. Consul in Barbados when I came back.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine had sent on my passport and the things I left here. So, I had duplicates. So, when I came back, the man at the dock said to me, “You know, you could be arrested for this. You are not supposed to have two passports and two of everything, and here you have two of everything.” Well, here, I didn’t realize what I was doing, but this is what happened. The night that I brought out my book called, “Your Faith Is Your Fortune,” it was in the month of February, and it was snowing―about twelve to fourteen inches of snow on the ground. Naturally, I brought out, and I was very proud of, the book; and I expected the usual audience of about a thousand people.

We used to have about a thousand people three times a week: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights, in a little church off Times Square. Well, this night in question they couldn’t get there; and maybe a hundred people came, which was a good crowd for that sort of weather. But the book sale was simply nil, and I was a little bit disappointed in that.

So, this night in question in the month of February I slept in Barbados, just as though I were there in the flesh. Here, I went to bed in New York City with the snow on the ground and still coming, and I assumed that I am in my Mother’s home; and here I am in Barbados with the warm tropical air in Mother’s home, and the whole thing was so natural to me. I went sound asleep in Barbados in my Mother’s home. When I woke the next morning the snow was higher, just the opposite of the state into which I fell when I went to sleep. Well, I didn’t’ know Mother was ill. And, then, came the month of August; and here I was under compulsion―I had to go. I had “gone and prepared the place.”

He said, “I will go and prepare a place for you; and when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye shall be also.” (John 14:2,3) Well, this is a conversation that takes place within us. The “I” in me, the Dreamer,–it goes and prepares a place, and it leaves the “outer” man wherever he was; and when the place is completely prepared, the Dreamer returns and picks up the garment of flesh where it had left it and takes it across a bridge of incidents which it will prepare―my rational mind could never have devised the means. It prepares it and compels me to make the physical journey and ithad made all in imagination.

So, I can tell you that I went to bed and prepared that place; and then, not knowing of my very sick Mother, my wife and I sent off to Maine and made reservations to spend a month in the State of Maine. That had to be canceled because I had already prepared the place to go out to Barbados.

Anyone can do it. In fact, you’re invited to do it, for we are told: “Come, test me and see” (Second Corinthians 13:5) We are invited to test Him. Well, how would I test you, if you and I are one, and you are the Dreamer in me? Here, I assume to be the weaker one, and this is sound asleep. Well, the true reality of my Being is that Dreamer-in-me―the One Who is dreaming the dream of life. “Everything is possible to God” (Matthew 19:26), and God is in man as man’s own wonderful human imagination.

“Well, let us go and look at him. Well, he is sleeping now and he’s dreaming. And what do you suppose he is dreaming about?…Well, he is dreaming about you.” (“Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll)

Well, that is a shock to Alice. “Dreaming about me? Nobody could know that!”

“If he stopped dreaming about you,” said Tweedle-Dee, “where do you suppose you would be?”

If you stopped dreaming of being poor, where do you suppose poverty would be? If you stopped dreaming about anything that you now think you are,–it could be poverty, it could be limitations of the flesh, limitation socially, limitations of anything; if you stopped dreaming that, where do you think that would be? It exists only in your imagination. If you stop dreaming about it, it has not life in itself, for life is in you, and you animate it and keep it alive.

So, the poor man is poor only because he is dreaming, “I am poor.” And whatever I say I am, that I become, for His name is in me. And that’s the Guardian Angel that leads me from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom; and He is Jehovah Himself! And Jehovah’s name is the concentration of His very Self.

If His name is in me, He is in me. Well, what’s His name? I AM. He has no other name. Well, then, He is the Father. That is the ultimate revelation of God-in-man. When He unveils Himself as God the Father, then His Son stands before you and calls you, “Father.” And you know who you are, because His son calls you, “Father.” And you know this wonderful relationship between yourself (the Father) and the son of God who now is yourson.

So, this is the great mystery as revealed in Scripture. So, here in this world, even though the papers will tell you, the TV will confirm it, and all the magazines will add to it, that a depression is on, and they are letting people out, and you can’t get a job, and you must take a cut in salary in order to hold your job―well, you listen to that, and you will simply confirm everything they suggest, for you are simply applying the same law. If you believe it, you are applying it.

If you do not accept it, and will not dream that dream―don’t let them give you that kind of a dream; you hold onto a new kind of dream, a better dream; this Dreamer-in-you can do everything, and it does everything. “For by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3)

“I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.” Yes: “I, even I am He.” That’s what we are told in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy.

So, the One in you―the Dreamer―kills and makes alive. Don’t think for one moment that there is a God who makes alive and another being who kills. There’s only one Creator. There is only one Being that can create anything, and that Being is in you as your own wonderful human imagination.

Now, the world, being a rational state, will tell you that that’s irrational, it isn’t sound, it doesn’t make sense. I’m not telling you it makes sense, but it proves itself in performance. And if there is evidence for a thing, what you think about it, or what somebody else thinks about it, doesn’t really matter. What does it matter tonight if my friend tells his friends in Chicago what he did or what he asked of me or what I did, and then what happened? They may never believe what happened or what I did. He does. That’s all that matters. They may go blindly on saying, “No, that would have happened anyway, Jerry.” It doesn’t make any difference what you know tell me, and what he said he did; this is a rational world; and so the broker saw a profit for himself. He, first of all, heard of it, he investigated it and approved of what he found, and now he wants to underwrite it. That’s a rational thing. Then friends of his, with money to invest―they, too, investigated; then finding what they had hoped to find, they want to put their money into something that they think is good and solid. Therefore, be rational about it. He knows tonight―he may forget tomorrow; but he knows tonight what we did, and he knows tonight between May and July he raised three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on an entirely new venture.

I know from my own experience with my family what they have done. They started behind the 8-ball. Today, as head of all the big corporations, they are not paying very much. No; profits are down, and therefore dividend checks are down. My brother Victor, who does exactly what I am talking about―it’s all in his imagination―started behind the 8-bal; so this year he did a forty-million-dollar business, and so I got my dividend check. It was a twenty-per-cent dividend. How many companies are paying twenty per cent? He paid me twenty per cent on my stock; and all the other ones, they are going down and down and down, but I got a big check, twenty per cent. That’s unheard of, but we are a private company; therefore, we can pay what we want. It’s not public; every share of stock is owned by the family. So, my dividend check was twenty per cent of the value of my stock, because he didn’t read the papers, and he doesn’t have a TV set, and he’s not influenced by rumors. He can dream as much as anyone can dream.

There is a man who is paid a huge salary to write in the newspapers to scare people to death. He writes headlines. That’s all that he does as a job, to scare you to death every morning, if you will buy the paper. Something good―some wonderful bit of news is buried in the last page or on some other page. But some horrible thing about someone you do not know―a big headline. They go all over the world to find an accident. Not satisfied with those they can find here, they go all over the world to find them; and then huge big headlines, and scare you. so, you pick it up and read it, and you start dreaming. Well, my brother didn’t do that. When they said that things are down and you can’t get this and you can’t get that, he doesn’t agree with that; he just simply has his own dreams. So, he ended the year and he could give me twenty per cent of my money.

So, I say to everyone: it is entirely up to you, because if you know Who-You-Are, you cannot turn to another, if you know who you are.

“Choose this day whom you will serve.” “I have chosen to serve the Lord,” said he. His name is Joshua. Well, “Joshua” is the Hebraic form of the Anglicized name “Jesus.” It’s the same thing,–the same meaning. It means “Jehovah-Saves.” So, “Joshua” and “Jesus” are identical in meaning. So, it is Jesus who is speaking: “I chose the Lord,” and he tells you: “I am the Lord.” “He who sees me sees the Father.” (John 14:9) “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

And, so, your imaginal acts are coming into your world. May I tell you? they are not receding into the past, as people think; and you will say, “It was just my imagination.” No, they are advancing into the future, and they will confront you. Well, when they confront you as a harvest, you do not even recognize your own harvest! You will say, “I don’t know this; I never did this.” Yes, you did. The whole vast world is simply the harvest of men who cannot stop imagining. You can’t stop it. That is life itself.

So, morning, noon and night you are imagining; and morning, noon and night you are harvesting. So, you can plant good seed or evil seed. It is entirely up to you. you can plant seed that frightens you to death or seed that is so altogether lovely when it comes into the world. so, I would say to my friend Jerry: “You know how it worked; don’t forget it. And may it now grow in your mind’s eye to a huge, huge business.”

We started with a few little pennies borrowed―borrowed money―back in 1922. My father didn’t have one red cent. What he did have that he valued more than a red cent,–he had ten children: nine sons and a daughter; and, to him, they were the most precious possession in his world. but he had to feed them, shelter the, and clothe them; and he had no money. So, on a little borrowed bit he started, but my brother Victor was the Dreamer. He was consciously dreaming.

He knew exactly what he wanted. He picked out the building on the main street. It was owned und the full name of “___ N. Roach & Company.” My family’s name would be J.N. Goddard & Sons, which would imply the family owned it.

Two years later a stranger came in,–it was for sale,–and said, “Are you going to buy the building?

And Vic said, “With what?”

He said, “Well, I have money. It’s in the bank, pays me nothing.”

“But,” he said, “I’ve got no collateral.”

“I’m not asking for any collateral.” He said, “Do you want the building?”

Vic said, “I would love it, but I have no money and I have no collateral.”

He said, “I will tell my lawyer and he will bid for me, because if they know I am bidding for it, they are going to bid it up.”

And, so, the lawyer bid that day. He represented many clients; so they did not know which client he represented. When the sale was over, he―on the surface―was the owner, but we were the owner. All he got from us as collateral was my brother’s signature and my father’s signature.

They paid back the money that he paid for the building in ten years at six per cent, reducing the equity every year by so much; so at the end of ten years it had been paid. It was reduced year after year after year, which we did. We kept our promise. When that man died, he left my brother, in cash, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, three homes, many personal possessions. He said, “You are my best friend. You advised me how to invest and what to do; and so I leave you now a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, tax exempt,”―no taxes to pay on it. And from that little beginning, with borrowed capital, it grew and grew and grew and expanded from one island to another island to another island; it’s all over the islands now, and not one person outside of the immediate family owns one share in the business. And it is still growing, in spite of the depression. He doesn’t listen to any arguments about depressions and recessions and what-not. He is simply growing.

I tell you, it’s entirely up to us if you know Who-You-Are. You and God are One. God literally became as you are, that you may be as God is. And to do that, He emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a slave, and this (indicating the body) is the form of the slave, and found Himself in the form of man, and became a billion, with all the weaknesses and limitations of man; but He has no limitations when He wakes; so when He wakes in you, you will have no restrictions, no limitations. But until He wakes, believe Him and exercise the talent that He gave you. It is Himself, which is your own imagination, and simply exercise it, and see how He wakes in your world. “Nothing is impossible to God,” and God is your own wonderful human imagination.

So, He is dreaming now. Oh, yes, I know He’s dreaming―dreaming it all, but dreaming horrible dreams. What horrible dreams they are dreaming: getting even with this, and getting even with that. You can stop it now, regardless of what the world tells you, and start a new record―a new dream. Leave it alone, and start dreaming something entirely different.

Well, how do you do it? What would it be like if I were the man I want to be? So, you start with wanting to be. You desire to be other than the man that you seem to be. Well, now, is it true that I could be? Well, if it were true, what would you see? And how would you see the world? And how would your friends see you? What would you say when you meet them, and what would they say if all the things that you now would like to be, you are? And where would you live if it were true? Would you still live in the limited state, or would you live in a more wonderful place, in a better state? Well, then, live there mentally.

You say, “I have never been in such a place. I wouldn’t have the courage to go into that place.” Mentally sleep in it.

I have told this to my friends time and again. In New York City we have a place called Tiffany’s, and we speak of “a Tiffany.” Well, that is the height for certain things. I am not speaking against Macy’s or Gimbel’s; they serve a purpose. But people will pass by Tiffany’s and go into Macy’s or Gimbel’s to buy a wedding present of, say, eight or a dozen glasses. It is sent off to the Bride-to-be in a Macy box, cost more than twelve lovely glasses from Tiffany that would be sent in a Tiffany box. I know that from experience.

There are people who were born on the east side of New York who have never crossed the barrier; they are embarrassed to leave their little place and come as far as Fifth Avenue. Those born on the west side never come to Fifth Avenue. They were born, and they die, there. People live in Brooklyn. They were born in Brooklyn and they die in Brooklyn seventy or eighty years later and never see Manhattan. They are embarrassed to go out of their own little shell. If they will not go out physically, just imagine trying to go out mentally! They are embarrassed. They wouldn’t go into a Tiffany; they wouldn’t go into a smart shop. And I’ve always said you can buy better things in the better stores, and not at these inflated prices that people tell you.

But, it takes some bold step in the mind to have you change your pattern of thinking, and therefore your pattern of living.

Tonight, if you really would like to transcend the world in which you live, transcend it first in your imagination, and don’t ask how it’s going to happen, how will things move in your world to permit it to happen. They will move. But first, in your mind’s eye, be the person that you want to be, and walk as though you were; and in a way that no one knows, you will become that person.

Well, soon or late, we become,–and we start to be and do our fixed beliefs―what we really believe that we are. Soon or late, we believe and we are and we do.

Well, tonight, you want to be noble―I mean, a noble being―not one born to the purple, not one born by physical descent; I mean noble in spirit, noble in mind. As far as I am concerned, I accept no aristocracy of the flesh―only the aristocracy of the Spirit. I refuse to accept any aristocracy of the flesh. We are not race horses! They do that way. First of all, they are not bred that way―those who claim to be of the aristocratic world. They simply breed them within their own sphere. That’s not breeding them physically. And I do not accept the physical descent. I accept the spiritual descent.

So, in your own mind’s eye, find Who-You-Are. Can you go higher than the Lord? You can’t go higher than the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the true identity of every child born of woman. Let him know that he is that Being. He begins to dream nobly. If he really is the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not entertain any unlovely thought in this world. He will become incapable of entertaining any unlovely thought.

So, if I tell you that you are, you may not believe it, but I know I am telling you the truth. So, when you sleep this night, sleep as if it were true, and daily walk in that assumption; and that assumption, though false at the moment, if you persist in it, it will harden into fact.

HE IS DREAMING NOW

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 5-8-1970

Tonight’s subject is: “He is Dreaming Now.” The Bible begins, as far as man is concerned: “And the Lord God caused a great deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept. And then the Lord God formed woman out of man, and then he told man that he must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one” − one body, one spirit, just one. That is the beginning of our story.

In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice Through The Looking Glass, all these great writers take the same theme; all the great poets, they do it. And here we find this one little…well, a little dialogue: “Come and look at him,” the brothers cried. And they each took one hand of Alice and led her up to where the King was sleeping. “He is dreaming now,” said Tweedle Dee. “And what do you think he is dreaming about?” Alice said: “No one can guess that.” “Why, about you!” said Tweedle Dee, triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?”

Where would you be when you are the creation of the King who is dreaming, if he dared to leave off dreaming about you until he completed his purpose? For the Lord God has sworn: “As I have planned so shall it be and as I have purposed so shall it stand.” “And My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of My mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”

What is his purpose? “He has made known unto us the mystery of His Will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” So what is this plan; what is this purpose? His plan − He is so in love with His creation that exists only for Him and not for itself; like an author − the play and all the characters they exist only for the author. They have no existence outside of the author. But He so loves His creation, He wants the creation to exist for itself. And there is only one way that it can exist for itself, for now it only is an animated body, the whole vast creation and He desires that it cease to be the poem existing only for Himself, but to exist for itself. And there is only one day and one way that He can do it. He can do it only by dying and becoming His poem. Only as He dies and becomes you, will you live for yourself. “So unless I die,” said He, “thou canst not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me.” So God dies − actually dies, and becomes His poem; He becomes you. And now you must dream the dream of death as he dreams it.

The poets speak of it as “the dream of life.” I rather go with Blake and say: “My Emanation yet my Wife till the sleep of Death is over.” Shelley calls it “the dream of life”

He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

But I will go with Blake. They are all great, but this is the dream of death where everything comes into being. It appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. When the dream is over, man, individually, will awake. And when he awakes he is the dreamer that is God the creator.

Now, think of Alice and put yourself in the place of Alice −Alice Through The Looking Glass, the most fantastic play. And you are Alice, and he is telling you what he is going to do. Well, you weep because he is going to die that you may live. You don’t want that sacrifice, but he tells you: “Unless I die thou canst not live,” then he makes you a promise: “But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” He makes that promise. Well, how would Alice know that this gift of God to herself, the great King who is dreaming, is complete? He tells Alice that He has a son, a glorious son, a youth just like Alice. He’s not more than a teenager − twelve, thirteen, very fair, beautiful eyes, and beyond the measure of beauty. That’s his son.

Then He tells Alice that you are going to have a son. And Alice tells him: “But how can this be, seeing I know not a man? I know no man.” Then he tells her: “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and the son to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. His name will be David,” he tells Alice, “it will be David.” And now we’ll continue the dream. And so he continues the dream with Alice, sharing with Alice all the horrors of the world. He puts her through all the furnaces, because he has to if she is going to bear his name. “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction, for my own sake, for my own sake I do it. For how should my name be profaned, my glory I will not give to another.” So he takes Alice through all the horrors of the world and then in the end, instead of thinking of Alice, He thinks from Alice.

I can think of you forever and forever and you are but shadows within my mind, flat surfaces depicting that which I would like you to be. But you are not that which I would like you to be until I die and live in you and turn you into a reality. How different the cubic reality is from the “dimension,” that is, the flat surface that depicts it. So Alice is simply within the imagination of the divine Imagination: only a flat surface, moving because He observes her. He animates her by being aware of her. But He so loves her, he will not let her go. He leaves everything and cleaves to Alice until he enters Alice and dwells within her and thinks from Alice, instead of thinking of Alice.

And then one day He awakes within Alice and Alice discovers she is the King that was dreaming. And then He brings confirmation of his gift and His promise to her. One day there is an explosion within Alice, and Alice sees standing before her this youth that He described, which was a boy − a handsome boy with beautiful eyes, ruddy, and fair of skin, and he stands before Alice and calls Alice: “My Father.” And Alice doesn’t feel strange about it, although she’s Alice, a girl, she doesn’t feel strange that she is the parent of this wonderful son, who is the King’s son. And the King had told her in the beginning: “That’s how I will prove to you that I will die and rise in you. I will give you myself and the only way I could ever give you myself is to give you my most precious possession; and my most priceless possession is my son David.”

One day, when I take you through all the trials of the world and prepare you to receive me, prepare you to receive my glory (“For I cannot give it to another.”) I have to bring you into a state where I can give you myself. And so one day He gives Alice himself, and then the son appears and calls Alice, “My Father.” And then − and only then − does Alice know that she is the King who was dreaming, and He was dreaming of Alice. And had He broken that “spell” before He completed his purpose, there would be no more Alice. It would have vanished as though it never were. But He swore in the beginning: “And the Lord God swore” that he would not break it until he had completed his purpose. So “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.” “For as I have sworn, so shall it be. And as I have purposed so shall it stand.”

I am only quoting Scripture. If you have a good concordance, you will find every quote that I’ve made tonight is from Scripture. Those who do not have it − my last is from Isaiah, the 14th chapter: “As I have sworn so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” “My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” That is from Jeremiah the 23rd [chapter]. All these are simply quotations. We are told: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.” Well, search the poets, too, for they are men of vision and they have made every effort to tell in their own wonderful way. For, as Tennyson said: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you take your vision and make every effort, based upon your talent, to put it into the form of a story that man, accepting the story, will find it moving story, into his own being, it becomes a man.

So here the story of the King who is dreaming and he is dreaming the most glorious play in the world, yet it’s a horrible play. Listen to the radio tonight or the TV tonight or tomorrow morning’s paper, and see the horrors all over the world. Brother against brother − the whole thing is in conflict, and yet it is serving a divine purpose. Don’t you lose the vision; don’t get lost in the play. You remain faithful to the Promise: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me. Wouldst Thou not One that would never die for Thee or ever die for One who had not died for Thee. And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not Himself Eternally for Man, Man could not Exist.”

So God died. And God’s death is simply to cease thinking of you and to think from you, to occupy you − just as you occupy a house and think from it, if it is your home. So within you now God dwells. He died for you. His name is “I AM.” That’s His name forever and forever. He has no other name, just “I AM.” He is your redeemer, turning you from a moving animated body into a life giving spirit.

One day back in ‘54 I heard these words. Now, you will find it difficult to grasp it, but they have stayed with me since the vision. The vision was audio. And here a voice is speaking: “You do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep. It is all a movement of mind. The intensity is determined by the strength of the vortex you create. It is just like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness. You only believe that you move when you wake, as you think you move in sleep.”

Where is God moving, save in Imagination? Where on earth is he moving where he is? He’s all places; there is no place where God is not. So where is He moving? It’s only a movement in mind. And the whole vast world moves because God moves within Himself. We are but animated bodies and He doesn’t want the poem to exist only for him; He wants the poem to exist for itself. So here he dwells now in man and man thinks he is moving. I came here tonight in my friends’ car. I trust we’ll go back tonight, and I will think: “Well, I moved. I moved from my home to here; I moved from here to my home,” and yet the voice that never has deceived me tells me I do not move in waking any more than I move on my bed in sleep.

It’s all a movement of mind. Then he tells me it’s like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness, and the intensity is determined by the vortex that I create; that I only believe that I move when I wake, as I think I move when I sleep. Well, I know I do not move during the night, save just move from one side to the other in bed. Wednesday morning, as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most delightful time, and here the whole thing was as clear as crystal. I met my wife in 1936. I fell in love with her the very moment I saw [her.] She didn’t with me, but she didn’t know that she was going to be my wife. I knew it that very moment, I just knew it. I said: “You don’t know it but you’re going to be my wife.”

And I had no social, intellectual, financial, or any other background that you would turn and say: “All right, so he has this…none of those things.” But I still knew she was going to be my wife. But I tell you, I had…she was going to be my wife.

So Wednesday morning as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most marvelous game with myself. My daughter was born in 1942; I met her mother in 1936; here now it is up to date: it is 1970. This is the time of the vision and here is my daughter. She is what her age is now: she almost will be twenty-eight. She knows that I am in love with this young lady who is twenty-nine. She heartily disapproves. I tell her: “That’s your mother.” She doesn’t know her mother, when her mother was twenty-nine. And I knew all these were states.

You ask me why we go through hell in this world. To acquire a keyboard on which we will play tomorrow. Today it seems like a chromatic scale, one note after the other leading up to a huge keyboard. Tomorrow you will take two events widely separated in time and slide them together, and they will sound differently from the individual note when you encountered it, the individual experience. Then you will be able to move your mind into a larger focus and split it, as you would your fingers on a piano and hit − not two events widely separated in time, but hit five, hit ten. And you will take this fabulous keyboard of 6,000 years, acquiring notes, and you will play the most fantastic creation in the world.

So, here I took my daughter and I was having fun with her, and I am having the most glorious romance with her mother which she didn’t know (the romance with her mother that was twenty-nine). I was excited as I was when I was young and in love with her when she was twenty-nine. My daughter, at twenty-seven, knows nothing of that mother, and she denies it. I say: “She’s your mother,” and she doesn’t know that at all. She says: “Nope, entirely different. That came years later.” And then I took the ships, I went to sea, and did all these things that I took my wife so often across the Caribbean on ships. We have flown several times, but many a time we took the ships. And all these things − and I’m playing them all together, having the most fantastic thing, knowing that each one was a state in itself and not related to anything unless I chose to relate it.

I could take all these states, and I played the most creative part, I was creating the most wonderful drama using only the experiences from the day I met my wife in 1936 up to the present moment. And I was playing the most fantastic thing, bringing in all kinds of suspicions from my daughter, and her father falling in love with this young girl. And I was enjoying every moment of it. She didn’t know it; she was only a state in my world. And my wife, through all these years that she’s been my wife, she’s only a state, individual states, one after the other. That every moment of my life I am acquiring a new note on this fabulous keyboard, on which I will play tomorrow when I completely leave this garment. And life within me I will animate the entire thing. And will I then create out of that fabulous thing an Alice, that I will so fall in love with something coming out of that fabulous keyboard that I too, will do for Alice what He did for me?

I will say then to that that comes out of my creative power: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me, Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And unless God dies for Man and gives himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” So God dies. So you and I are creating now − or rather we are gathering together through our horrible and lovely experiences, for “joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.”

So we are gathering together a fabulous keyboard on which we will play tomorrow and produce that perfect one with whom we will fall in love, as told you in the very beginning of Genesis. And out of Him came Eve, and then he had to leave everything − his father, his mother, everything, and cleave to his wife until they became one. So you will create your wife out of what you will play from the keyboard that you are now acquiring. And you will bring forth your Eve, too; and you will so fall in love with that, that you do not wish her to exist only for you within that poem. You want her to exist for herself, and there is no way you can make her exist for herself unless you give yourself to her. So you die. You give up everything that you are − your creative power and your wisdom − and take the weakness and the limitations of the one that you brought forth out of your own being: “My emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is past.”

Then you will understand what all these poets have been trying over and over again to tell us. Take the one of Emily Bronte. You’ve seen the picture and maybe you’ve read the book, Wuthering Heights. (The first time I saw Olivier was in that picture.) There’s a character in it called Cathy. “I have dreamed in my life,” says Cathy, “dreams that have stayed with me ever after and changed my ideas. They have gone through and through me like wine through water and altered the color of my mind.” These are the very words of Emily Bronte. She wrote it. There was no Cathy, save in her Imagination − it was all in Emily Bronte. I can say with Bronte, the same thing happened to me. So how could I ever be what I was, after the vision, when the vision is more real than you are here now? Far more real, more alive. So, from vision to vision I have been compelled to change what formerly I believed. I could no longer accept the theories of men. They all sit down and write their theories. Karl Marx writes his theory. It’s a little theory. It shakes the world, yes, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. And so another one writes another theory and another theory and so you have all kinds of theories in the world. But then my visions completely turn them completely over. Hasn’t a thing to do with vision, with the reality of life. Hasn’t a thing to do with it, even though they seem to shake the entire world.

So, let them shake the world. You remain faithful to the vision. If they haven’t come, they’ll come. They come at the end of time. “In the end you will understand it clearly.” In the end. In the beginning it seemed you must go here and go there and go elsewhere to acquire all kinds of knowledge. Eat it as much as you want, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in the end you will eat from the Tree of Life. And you will know what it really is; it’s all within us. God became as I am that I may be as he is. Because he fell in love with his creation, I was part of his poem that existed only for God. And he so loved me, the character in his poem, that he wanted to give me independence and freedom. I only existed with him as an animated body to move and do as he willed, and independence means that I can do as I will. To do that, he had to give me himself, because He has life in Himself.

Now, he wants to give his son life in himself. To do that he had to give me himself and he is a father; and being the father he has to now give me his son, and it isn’t Neville. He has an eternal son that he shares with the characters of his poem, making all the characters himself. For he is a protean being playing all the parts. And so, having given me himself, and he is a father, he must now give me his son, and his son stands before me and calls me “father,” and then I know that I am the King who was dreaming.

”So come and let us go and look at him,” said the brothers. “Oh, he is dreaming now and I wonder what he is dreaming about.” “But no one could know that.” “Why, about you,” said Tweedle Dee. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you think you would be?” But he will not leave off dreaming about you until his will has been accomplished. “For I will not turn back until I have executed an accomplished the intents of my mind.” Read it carefully, in the greatest book in the world, the Bible.

Let all the others speculate and carry on with all their nonsense. Today’s great theory that may even prove itself in performance will be disproved tomorrow by some modification of that theory. Even though it proves itself, it’ll be modified tomorrow. You can’t modify the vision of God. It is forever; you’ll never modify it. You don’t need a son called “David plus” or “David minus”; he is David, and there is no other son! You aren’t going to find him called by any other name. There is no other way to the awakening as God the Father, no other way. For there is only one way and no other way. So let them all speculate and let them run around trying to find another way to the Father. Someone comes to town with a huge balloon of advertising and they all rush to hear what he has to say, and they get nothing but nonsense and an empty pocketbook. And then they come back and wonder: “Why hasn’t it happened to me?” And you remain silent, for you know exactly what they’ve been doing. They have been running around from post to post and wonder “why it hasn’t happened to me.” That’s all over the Scriptures.

So I tell you: he is dreaming now and he’s dreaming about you. And he will not break the dream. No one can arouse him until he completes his intention. His intention is to give himself to you, as though there were no other in the world − just you and God, and eventually only you, for you will be God. There is nothing in the world but that.

Then having acquired this fabulous keyboard of experiences − oh, will you play! You’ll play it beautifully and bring forth one that so captures you that you want to give your emanation her own life, to make your emanation exist within herself and not just for you, as the poem exists for the poet. And you, too, will lay your life down in her and cleave to her until you become one.

Now, you dwell upon it, and let no one divert you. Oh, they can give you a thousand and one arguments. It makes no difference. After you have had a vision you are led by the vision, and you remain faithful to the vision. It would make no difference at all to you, although the world convolves as it is today, carrying signs this way and signs that way. And all brother against brother, as you’ve seen in the papers − don’t think for one moment it’s all in one direction. The country’s completely divided. The vocal minority seems to be the majority. It’s not the majority. On Wall Street today, a bunch of workers, construction workers with their helmets on, and they are protesting − not any war in Vietnam − protesting their pay. They want a raise in pay because of inflation. And then groups of these war protesters came by on Wall Street, and these fellows with their helmets − these strong, strapping men − became so incensed they jumped upon these fellows and beat them unmercifully, then unfurled the American flag − eight or ten flags, and with signs saying: “Impeach the Mayor, Lindsey,” − and walked with their American flags towards city hall. So they are not all protesting in one direction.
There are unnumbered ideas in the world, and men live by their ideas. Let no one think by tomorrow morning’s paper…depending on the cut of the paper, how they’re going to cut the news, for they all do it. They cut it based upon what the policy of the editorial setup is at the moment. But they do not know the world’s picture.

But you forget all of that nonsense, and you go about on this vision. God actually became you that you may become God. You dwell upon that and let the whole thing go past you. That is the story of Scripture. It’s the story of every great imaginative writer in the world and all the truly great poets. They took the same theme from Scripture based upon their vision, and they tried to the best of their abilities to tell it, knowing as Tennyson knew, that: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”

So you can tell it, and the lowly door will accept it in a most literal form, and they will live by it; it will simply cushion all blows. And eventually that truth will erupt in its true form within them, and they will see the truth of what was intended in the story.

So you are the Alice of Alice Through The Looking Glass, and you were taken to see the King, and he was sound asleep dreaming, and you thought that no one knew what he was dreaming about. But one of the angels did. He’s called Tweedle Dee − a nut. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and the Mad Hatter − they’re all nuts. Well, those in the angelic world would appear nuts to the rational mind in this world. For the rational mind is going to live longer, and the only one who gets richer by the advice given by one who’s talking about living longer, is the one who talks about it.

So you buy something because of highly publicized TV promotions. Someone highly publicized a little − what is called “Liquid Plumber.” And so I had some moment in my bathroom where the sink was all stopped up, so I got the Liquid Plumber. Poured it in, in abundance. It said it’s heavier than water, and it would go all the way down and just eat up everything that is organic and will not hurt anything that is not organic, so I poured it in. Water still remained; it didn’t go down. Called the plumber the next day. He couldn’t come that day but he would come the next day. So it was forty-eight hours. So when he came the entire sink was eaten away by the Liquid Plumber. So I asked him: “Does this thing work?” He said: “It does for two people: the one who manufactures it, and the one who sells it.” [Laughter from the audience.] They are the only ones who profit by the Liquid Plumber. And so you turned on the TV and you saw it and you bought it. It is still on TV and I am sinning, because to sin by silence, when I should protest, makes cowards of us all. But I haven’t protested to the station that advertises this nonsense and I haven’t protested to the one, the place where I got it or to any one who manufactures it, so I am the silent sinner. Multiply me because of my embarrassment. Here is a sink completely eaten up by Liquid Plumber.

So that is the world in which we live. And so that same thing goes for selling any other product. And that product could be how to get rich. A man, a friend of mine, died two years ago. I went to his funeral. He left behind an unsold volume, but he sold many of them, How To Live Forever. (That was the title of his book.) Well, he knew that it couldn’t catch up with him, because whenever he died, no one could question him. Perfectly all right. Another one tells you how to become a millionaire overnight and so he will sell it to the gullible. So he makes his little money and he still leaves the book. And he goes from one little place to another, selling his little nonsense. That’s the world over.

You go back to the book of books that will not change − it’s the Bible. It’s not history, it’s not secular history. This is revelation from beginning to end. Hasn’t a thing to do with secular history. All these characters are eternal states of consciousness, and you will meet them. And when you enter into that state, they become animated because of your entrance. You are the animating power of everything in the world. Now you are acquiring a keyboard. And you think of that chromatic scale, and suppose you could only play it in one direction, and would not miss one measure? It’s all you can do. And then one day you discover you don’t have to go on this way forever − you can jump. Or you can go back in time, and your fingers can split and you can hit two notes together. Sounds like the devil but you learn to still hit another one that sounds harmonious. And one day you become so proficient that you hit a note and though it’s a discord, you learn how to resolve it. You can produce it and bring it into a dissonance. And you become the most expert on this keyboard.

Well now, think of life, 6,000 years of experiences building a keyboard, and each note is simply an experience in life. And you take all these experiences and you are the artist now, and what you bring out, out of that fabulous keyboard…And then you bring it out and you want it to exist for itself and not only for you. So, instead of playing on it forever and having all these things come out, these glorious things existing only for you and not for themselves, you do the same thing that God did for you. “So unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me.” And you give yourself to your own creation that it may exist for itself and not only for you.

Now let us go into the silence

Are there any questions please?

Q: After one is awakened and he has left the garment on earth and he returns home, what is he doing, what does he do?

A: What does he do? He creates, my dear, and contemplates this world of death. As Blake said it so beautifully: “Those in Great Eternity Who contemplate on Death said thus: What seems to be is to Those to Whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequents to Those to Whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair and Eternal Death, but Divine Mercy steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body Of Jesus.” They are part of the Brotherhood, the redeemed body, and contemplate this world, letting it be to those who want it to be.

Tonight, a man who has a billion dollars − oh, he can’t think for one moment…he wouldn’t for one moment think of death. He doesn’t want to die; he wants to live here forever. Though the body gets older and older and weaker and weaker, he wants to live here forever with his billion dollars. He knows he has to leave it behind him, and he’s breaking his brains not to, and wondering how to protect it in the right channel. And he builds himself portraits of himself, always glamorous portraits. Compare the original to the portrait − well you’d faint if you thought these two are the same. But he has to have that for posterity. He builds himself, like Stalin. Stalin had thousands and thousands, and Hitler had thousands and thousands of statues of themselves. They renamed the rivers, they renamed the cities. Stalingrad − now it’s Volgograd. He wasn’t yet cold when they renamed it for him. And all the rivers are renamed, and the fellows put the little things around their heads and broke the statues and smashed them. He never thought that would ever happen.

A little fellow here in Santo Domingo, he did the same thing, too: Trujillo − that little tiny island − statues all over to Trujillo. He only stole about a billion out of the small island, and built up his own little reputation. So they all do it, they all do it. And people are still carried away with these stupid little leaders, and pick themselves up and like sheep they will follow anything. You know, if you took a sheep as the leader, at sea, and took the leader and threw the leader overboard, all the sheep would follow and jump overboard. That’s a fact; that is a fact. Take the leader of the sheep, the belled one, throw him overboard, all the sheep will run and jump overboard. That’s what man does. They’re just like sheep. But they don’t know it.

Stop being the sheep and stop following and following just because it’s a popular thing to do, and begin to simply dwell upon the eternal story and hope it will take place in you.

Any other questions please?

Q: You use that keyboard analogy. [Is that] what we’re doing while we’re here?

A: Why certainly my dear, every moment in time is a note. It’s an experience and it is caught in eternity. You may not remember the entire day and all the little sequences of the day, but they’re not lost. If you gave your time to it, you’d bring it back. There is a little practice of getting into bed and thinking of the day in reverse order. It’s a very good way to go to sleep, may I tell you, because the mind tires so quickly if you take it in reverse. And by the time you get to where you started to undress, if you take all the details, you are sound asleep. Man thinks he can go all through the day. He goes through by jumping from cleaning his teeth to dinner. There is quite an interval between dinner and cleaning your teeth. If you took all the little details − and they’re all individual notes on the keyboard − before you go just a matter of moments, the mind tires and off to bed you go, off to sleep. In the morning when we get up, we jump up, wash our face, and get ready for the day − and how many record the individual incidents of the day?

HE IS MY RESURRECTION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 06-28-1968

The gospel, which appears to be a little secular story, is truly a mystery to be known only by revelation.

In the 16th chapter of John we are told: “I came out from the Father and came into the world.

Again I leave the world and I return to the Father.” In these four short phrases we find the pre-existence of Christ, his incarnation, his death, and his ascension.

I could put this in the first person, plural sense and say: “We came out from the Father” for we are told in the 1st chapter of Ephesians: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” So all of us were chosen in him. That is why I can say, “We came out from the Father and came into the world. Again we are leaving the world and are going to the Father.”

How can this be? Let me use a simple analogy. A plant contains within itself the suckers which can be removed and transplanted. While existing within the plant, the suckers partake of the plant’s life, but when removed and transplanted they become the parent.

It was God’s purpose to give us himself, and God is a Father. The only way he could do it however was to detach us from himself. Yet, like the sucker, he who sent us has never left us; therefore we must express that which the parent plant is. If its flowers were red, that which was transplanted will bear red flowers. Now, regardless of how healthy the stock may be, when it is transplanted it appears to die, showing us the secret of life through death. The seed falls into the ground and dies in order to be made alive. So the seed, containing within itself all that the parent contained, dies and is made alive to become the parent, containing within itself that which was in the parent stock.

And so it is with us. We came out from God the Father and were planted in a world of death, a world of mortality. Then, having died, we become quickened and grow into the parent stock, for if we were a father before detachment, we must return as the one Father who sent us out. And everything God the Father possesses, we possess in our fullness. His son reveals himself as our son. Whatever happened to him happens to us, for we came out from the Father and came into the world. Again, as we leave the world we go to the Father. That is the great mystery of scripture.

Let me now tell you of a vision a lady who is here tonight shared with me. She found herself viewing a very long train ascending from a very dark cavern into which she descended. Immediately upon entering its blackness, she imagined herself aboard the train and was instantly on it. Moving up at an incredible speed, she wondered about her destiny, when a voice said: “It will not be long,” and she entered a world filled with pinnacles and sparkling light. Then a triangular-shaped light penetrated her brain and she found herself standing in front of a very tall chair upon which a great being was seated. As she gazed into his eyes she felt herself immersed in love and in a voice so very tender he called her, “Babe.” Feeling so small and young among these pinnacles, she said: “What shall I do?” when something exploded in her and she heard a voice and saw the words, “Record It” appear in script before her eyes. Seeing me in the distance, she said: “That is Neville” and the being seated in the chair began to describe me in the most endearing, possessing terms ending with these words: “He is my resurrection.” This statement was picked up by invisible voices which echoed and re-echoed and re-echoed all the way down through time as she awoke.

Yes, she saw the Father. I am his resurrection. He buried himself in me as he buried himself in you before you came out from him. Having resurrected the Father in me, I am his resurrection and know myself to be the Father. Before coming out I did not know this. I partook of the tree of life, but I was not individualized.

There never was a time that you and I were not partaking of this tree of life, but we were not individualized. We did not voluntarily detach ourselves and enter this world, but were made subject unto futility in the hope that we would be set free from this body of death and obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Now, the Son of God is one with God, for the son erupts into the Father. Like the sucker which contains within itself everything that the parent tree contains, but cannot know it until detached and transplanted, we contain within ourselves everything the tree of life contains, but will not know it until we come out from the Father and come into the world. Having died, death will be transformed into sleep, from which we will all awaken as God the Father. Individually we will all have these four mighty acts erupt from within to spell out the being we really are.

In the statement: “I came out from the Father” the pre-existence of Christ in you, who is your hope of glory, is established. I am not speaking of some little man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago, but of the mystery of Christ which is buried in every child born of woman. Christ, God’s creative power and wisdom, pre-existed. His detachment and entrance into the world through his birth from below is his birth into death. Then, after the long interval of death he is born from above into a world of life. Having come out from the Father and coming into the world, his return to the Father is essential. He comes back bearing witness to the fullness within himself of all that the parent contained, thereby knowing he is the Father. This is how all the fathers return.

We are told that in the last days scoffers will come, saying: “Where is the promise of his coming? Forever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” The scoffers do not know that a thousand years is as a day to the Lord; therefore, six days would be like 6,000 years to mortal eye. As He promised, you will return on time, not a moment before or after.

Your return begins through the impregnation by one who has awakened. He does not arbitrarily choose his offsprings [sic]. They are called by the depth of his own being. But he is spiritually born to play the part of siring that section of time to which he belongs, a role he did not choose but was born to play.

Now let me tell you of another vision. This lady said: “While standing at attention in a military drill, Marta and I were called to the front where you, Neville, dressed in a long black robe, presented us each with a black umbrella, which was opened and raised over our heads. Then you spoke profound words of eternal wisdom.

“Suddenly the scene changed and Marta and I, still with the umbrellas over our heads, are standing in a room, when I said to Marta: ‘Did you understand what he said?’ and she answered: ‘No.’ Dorothy Dix then entered the room and said: ‘I will explain it to you.’ I was so surprised with that remark that I awoke.”

The symbolism in this vision was perfect: a black robe and black umbrellas. In symbolism, black is the incomprehensible divine silence, eternity. In the Song of Solomon, the bride speaks, saying: “I am black.” The word translated “black” should be “the blackest of black.” In Hebrew there are no superlatives or comparative. To emphasize the comparative, a word must be repeated, as “black-black.” To make it superlative, the word must be repeated three times, such as “holy, holy, holy,” as there is no way to say “holiest” in Hebrew. The world “black” spoken by the bride should be repeated to the nth degree. “I am black, but comely O daughters of Jerusalem, black like the curtains of Solomon.” Here, black is the incomprehensible mystery, and in her dream she did not understand it. Then one appears who she least expected to be able to interpret it, but one who was present, by invitation, at the last supper. Don’t discount that.

Now, this vision was preceded by a conversation following my last lecture, when this lady, knowing she had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit, said to her friend: “What am I going to do for the next thirty years?” And her friend replied: “What are you talking about? Did he not tell you that you are blessed? What’s thirty years when you have been waiting throughout eternity to reach this point in time? How can you be concerned, when you know that in just thirty years you will depart this world and enter an entirely different age?” That conversation prompted the vision which she did not understand, because I was dressed in black as I revealed the mystery of mysteries. “I am black, but comely O daughters of Jerusalem, black as the curtains of Solomon.” This is the blackest of black, containing divine silence, eternity, and an incomprehensible secret which Dorothy knew (but don’t forget: Dorothy was present by invitation to the last supper).

Another lady who is here tonight shared this experience with me, saying: “In my dream I was talking to two people, when one looked at me and said: ‘How far is it?’ to which I replied: ‘It is only thirty minutes away’ and awoke.”

This lady has conceived of the Holy Spirit and is now waiting – not minutes, miles, or hours, but thirty years for the child to be born. Again I will say: what does it matter? She told me that all through her life she has never wanted things and knows that is why she has never accumulated worldly possessions. Hers has been a questing mind, always seeking, always searching for the cause of life. May I tell her that at this moment she is richer than the richest man in the world, for she has been selected to receive the imprint, receive the gift of God Himself.

We came out from the Father, containing within ourselves the ovum (all that is necessary to become the Father). Walking through the centuries we have carried our egg, awaiting that moment in time when the egg is fertilized. One who is a Son of God by nature, having been born for that purpose, will be used in that capacity so that others may become sons of God by grace. It is all supernaturally done. Some remember when the union took place, but it is not experienced on this level at all.

In the meanwhile don’t neglect the law of God which is: An assumption will harden into fact. If an assumption creates its own reality then there is no such thing as fiction. I may forget what I assumed today and when it appears I may not recognize my own harvest, but it could not enter my world had I not brought it in by an imaginal act.

Tonight some unknown author is writing a story in order to pay the rent. The story may not sell, but for a moment he will lose himself in its creation, and when his story comes to pass in the tomorrows, those whose lives will be touched will not recognize his harvest. Tonight the movie, “A Night to Remember” will be shown on television. Although the movie was recently made, it is based upon the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which duplicated a book called Futility, written in 1898. In the novel, a ship filled with the rich and complacent was on its maiden voyage, when it sank on an iceberg in the Atlantic. Fourteen years later the White Star Line built a duplicate of the imaginary ship described in the book, filled it with the rich and complacent, where it sank on its maiden voyage on an iceberg in the Atlantic. And people say there is fiction? No, there is no fiction.

There is not a moment in time when imagination is not acting, causing the events of the world. You may not remember your thoughts and deny you have anything to do with what you are reaping, but you can only harvest what you plant. Kennedy’s death was a violent action, but I am told that the Kennedys had apparently felt they were destined to lose their sons this way. As a family they entertained this sense of martyrdom, this sense of violence which caused it to come to pass. There are no accidents; as a man sows, he reaps. You are free as the wind to imagine anything, but you must be willing to pay the price, for you will reap the results. Imagining yourself to be a good author you can write a horrible story of hate and violence and reap the results, for the hate you write about goes out and brings the violence back into your own being.

A friend recently told me that when he was about nine years old he received a Ouija board. One day he asked the board: “Who am I” and it spelled out the word “Christ.” Believing the board completely, he thought he was Jesus reincarnated, but when he told his minister (who was of the high church of the Episcopal world) he was immediately educated out of what they called “neurotic sin.” Believing he had sinned because of entertaining the thought, he prayed for a great sacrament and complete absolution of this sin, when a marvelous vision descended upon him revealing an altar with everything attached.

These so-called “wise” people, who go around with their long robes and conduct a service in Latin which no one understands, should read scripture. Paul said: “I would rather speak five words that can be understood than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” If you want to speak Latin go to the Vatican, but don’t come here where very few people understand one word outside of English (and even that poorly) and speak in an unknown tongue. Speak the tongue in which you were born that you may be understood, or be silent.

This lad was educated out of his belief when he should have continued in it, as Christ in him is his hope of glory. Scripture urges you to examine yourself, to test yourself and see if Jesus Christ is now in you. And if all things are made by him and without him is not a thing made that is made, who is he? I’ll tell you who he is. He is your own wonderful human imagination. How do I know this to be true? By imagining a state, remaining faithful to it and watching it come to pass in my world. Believing that God makes all things, I made my desired state alive and can now trace its maker back to my imagination.

Now I know that 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 Jesus, the divine body of which we are His members. I know this because if He makes all things and I imagine, remain faithful to my imaginal state and it happens. I have found him, not as someone divorced from me, but as my own wonderful human imagination.

So that little planchette, moved by this lad’s own unconscious motion, revealed his true identity; yet the so-called wise men called it neurotic sin. I know exactly what he went through, for I was raised in the low church of the Episcopal world and my mother used to tell me that the priests were the wisest men in the world. I believed her until I became a man and the visions began to appear within me. Then I realized how very stupid they really are. Throughout the centuries they have fooled the people into believing they are so wise because they can speak a little phrase in Latin. But when you ask them to explain the verse I spoke of tonight: “I came out from the Father and came into the world, again I am leaving the world and going to the Father” they give you only the literal meaning and say that a glorious being came out from the Father.
“Where?” you ask, and they reply: “Don’t ask questions, my son.”
“He came out in what way?”
“Out of our holy blessed mother.”
“In what manner did he do it?”
Again, “Don’t ask questions, my son. This is the great secret of the church.”

At the end of your conversation you will discover you have been talking to one who doesn’t know the answers, so he gives you all kinds of confused thoughts to bewilder you. During my thirty years on the platform I have talked with them time and time again. They stand open-mouthed and bewildered as I speak from experience, while they speak from theory. They call it blasphemy when I tell them I have found the Son of God who called me Father, yet I see them as blind leaders of the blind, as foretold in scripture.

I tell you: your own wonderful human imagination is Jesus Christ. There never was another and there never will be another. One day He will awaken in you and all that is said of him will be experienced by you in the first person present tense; and may I tell you: far from being ashamed, you will be thrilled beyond measure. All you have ever done as a man in this world of mortality of which you are ashamed will be wiped clean. It is necessary for you to go through the muck and mire of this world so that this seed may erupt. And when it does you are one with God, who is perfect, and your entire past is wiped out as though it never were.

There is no such thing as earning your way into heaven. Heaven is not earned; it is a gift. When you hear salvation’s story and believe it, the kingdom will unveil itself from within, and from that moment on no man, regardless of his position in the secular world, can stand before you and make you feel unimportant. You will simply ignore his words, knowing that although he may sit on a throne he does not know who he is. And tomorrow if he leaves this world he will find himself in a world just like this, in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in him, while you – unknown by the world – will instantly possess your immortal garment and mortality will be blotted out by light.

In the 5th chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul is speaking to those he addressed when he said: “We groan in this body waiting for our heavenly body,” as he was hoping spiritual birth would come to them before death appears. Death here in the twenty-eighth year would leave you still unclothed in a spiritual sense, as you would still have two more years to go to be clothed with immortality. A lady here tonight is not yet twenty-eight, but her memory returned to another age, another time, and she said: “I recall you vividly. You haven’t changed. You still have the same face, the same voice. You told me than about a father and a son and I didn’t understand.”

I tell you: throughout the night I move through sections of time, for I have other sheep that are not of this body. I must gather them all into one fold before I can return to the Father as the Father. This is my story.

You dwell upon it and don’t neglect the principle of your wonderful imagination. Use it lovingly on behalf of everything, for when you do, you are using it on yourself, as there is no other. The world is yourself pushed out. Imagine and then drop it. You don’t have to burst a blood vessel, call the “right” people, or do the “right” thing in order to succeed. All you need do is assume you are now what you want to be. Remain faithful to that assumption and in a way that no one knows you will become it. Then try it again and again, and while you are about your Father’s business working this principle, another work, unknown to the world, is taking place in you, preparing you for the fullness of time when the egg you have been carrying throughout the centuries is fertilized. Then, thirty years later, it erupts and all that is said of Christ is experienced in a personal, most intimate manner.

Now let us go into the silence.

HE WAKES IN ME

December 22, 2013

Neville 03-24-1967

Tonight’s subject is “He Wakes in Me”. I should say “he wakes in us”. Who is he? The Lord Jesus Christ who is crucified in us. He was never crucified on anything outside of man, and because he was crucified in us, he must rise in us.

Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And 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 resurrection, although not described in any portion of scripture, is really the high watermark, the very center of the Christian faith. As Paul said: “If Christ is not raised then our faith is in vain and we are as men the most to be pitied.”

Sunday morning the churches are going to proclaim that Christ is risen, and they should, because Christ is risen – but how do we know this? By the witnesses! By those who have experienced the resurrection. The experience of the resurrection in the lives of the apostles is the indispensable inner testimony without which Jesus Christ might have been raised, but could not have been preached as risen. Every one who is called, who experiences the resurrection, who experiences Christianity in its fullness, is an apostle, for you cannot experience it and not see the Risen Christ. Coming from within everyone will be raised, one by one, to unite into one single body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of us all. There is only one.

We are told in scripture that our lowly bodies will be changed to be of one form with his glorious body. Not like it, but of one form with it. There is only one form, one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is above all, through all, and in all. And in the 8th chapter of Mark it is said: “Those who are ashamed of my words, of him the Son of man will be ashamed when he comes into the glory of his Father with the heavenly angels.” These words precede the resurrection. In fact, when the drama is coming to its close, these events – although separated in time – are but part of a single complex. Now let me share one of these with you.

In 1946, I felt myself lifted up as I heard a heavenly chorus sing my praise and my victory over death. I felt as though I were a being of fire, clothed in a body of air. The body was self-luminous, as told in the 9th chapter of Mark: “His garments radiated light with such an intensity that no fuller on earth could bleach a garment comparable to it.” The garment was not white, but radiant light. There was no need for any external light, no sun, no moon, no stars, for I was light enough. I could see as far as vision desired, and as I glided by a sea of human imperfection, everyone was made perfect. Eyes returned to the empty sockets of the blind, the missing arms returned, the lame walked. Every conceivable imperfection vanished as I glided by, accompanied by this wonderful, heavenly chorus singing my praises and calling me by name. When the last one was made perfect, the chorus sang out: “It is finished” (which is the last cry on the cross) and I felt myself – now a being of fire clothed in a garment of air – actually crystallize into this tiny little body called Neville. I felt so bound, so restricted, as though I couldn’t turn in any direction.

On this level your body is animated and wonderful, but you cannot compare it to that radiant garment which is your transfigured self. You will wear this heavenly garment before you experience the resurrection, yet this is the garment of the Risen Christ. There is no other garment of Christ and there is only one Christ, so everyone who is raised is he. We are told in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (I think it is the 6th chapter): “God raised the Lord and we also shall be raised by his power”, and may I tell you: what a power! Called the power of God, it comes to you just like a wind. At first you feel it as a vibration, but when it hits you, this transfigured self is a wind, an unearthly wind.

Then in 1959 the resurrection came, followed by my birth into an entirely new age. The resurrection begins the entire drama of Christianity, although many experiences precede it, as you wear your transfigured self and know yourself to be a being of fire dwelling in a body of air. The resurrection comes so suddenly. There is no warning, for in this transfigured state you are told to tell no one until the Son of man is raised from the dead.

Man has been taught to believe that a man was crucified on a wooden tree, taken down from it, and put into a grave – and it isn’t so at all! Christ, the great Messiah, is buried in you as your creative power and wisdom, which is God’s creative power and wisdom lowered to this level. Buried in you, it dreams horrible experiences; but in the end this power begins to stir and as it does, it fulfills all that was foretold in scripture regarding itself.

Now listen to the words of Moses (the eternal state of the prophet through which all men pass) as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy: “The Lord, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren – him you shall heed.” Do not read this passage on the surface because translations are strange. Go back to find the Hebrew meaning for every word in the sentence. We will take just the one word, translated in the Revised Standard Version as “among” and in the King James Version as “midst”. The Hebrew word thus translated means: “Within yourself; the heart; the bowel; the very core of a person; the inmost thought of man.” So, “From within you the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me.”

Moses was the one in the ancient world who experienced the transfiguration. And when he returned to the Israelites, his body shone so, that he had to cover it, for they could not behold the glory of the man. Here is the prototype of the one who is to be raised up out of man, from man. Something comes out of man that is the Lord, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not something that comes out and leaves you here. Your garment is the grave in which God is buried as your own wonderful human imagination.

Everything in your world is produced by imagination. There isn’t a thing that was not first imagined, yet when it becomes an objective fact it seems so independent of your perception of it, that you forget its origin and do not realize it was produced by you. Everything that appears without was first an image, nothing more than a dream which was created by the dreamer in you, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then one day your imagination begins to stir and without warning you are resurrected. This is how it happened to me. I retired as usual, just as I have done throughout the years. Then came this unearthly wind. (Now, in both Hebrew and Greek the word “spirit” and “wind” are the same, so when you speak of the Spirit of the Lord you speak of the wind.) Intensifying itself in my head, I felt as though I was going to explode, that I must be experiencing a massive hemorrhage. But instead I began to awake to discover I was in my skull. I was more awake than I had ever been before. I knew a clarity of thought I had never known before, yet I was entombed in my skull and it was completely sealed.

Standing alone in this empty tomb, I was consumed with the desire to get out. Possessing a peculiar, innate knowledge, as though built in at the beginning of time, I knew that if I pushed the base of my skull something would move. Obeying that instinct I pushed, and something rolled away leaving an opening large enough for me to put my head through. Then I squeezed myself out inch by inch, just like a child coming out of the womb of a woman. For a few seconds I remained on the floor, and then rose to look at this body out of which I had come. It appeared to be dead, but its head was moving from side to side.

As I looked, I realized I had been in that body all this time and had not realized it was a tomb. I had always thought that it was I. If someone struck my hand they struck me! If food was placed in my mouth I ate it. If the body was fed, bathed, or shaved, it was me for as far as I was concerned I am it. It never occurred to me that the body was a garment I was wearing and it was a garment of death.

Then the wind increased, but instead of being in my head it was coming from the corner of the room, causing me to divert my attention from the garment on the bed. When I looked again, the garment was gone and in its place were my three brothers, one sitting at the head, and the other two where the feet were. They, too, heard the wind, for one rose and as he walked towards it his attention was attracted to something on the floor, and before he even picked it up he said: “It’s Neville’s baby.” The other two, in incredulous voices, said: “How can Neville have a baby?” He didn’t argue the point, but simply produced the evidence: an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Now, I didn’t give birth to a child; the child is but a sign. Scripture tells us: “This shall be a sign unto you. You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.” The babe is a sign that God is born. That his power is born on a higher level of his own being. God buried himself and then raised himself, and the evidence that he rose is called a birth, of which a child is the symbol. A little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes is a sign unto you that Spirit was born, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither can the perishable inherit the imperishable. If you are to enter the kingdom, you must leave the garment of flesh and blood which you have been wearing throughout the centuries.

So the resurrection is followed by your birth from above. Then come all the other events, which stretch over a period of 3 ½ years as told us in scripture. “When Jesus began his ministry he was thirty years of age, and his ministry lasted 3 ½ years.” It is exactly 1260 days, or 3 ½ years, to the end of the great drama. Then, as told us in the Book of Acts (now in the form of one called Paul), you will remain in the world because the need is great to persuade others of the kingdom of God and of the truth concerning Jesus Christ, and some will be persuaded by what you say, while others will disbelieve.

Then you will depart this world never to return again, for you will have raised yourself to a higher power and know yourself to be the one God and Father of all.

There are not many Christ’s running around. Not many Messiahs, only one. We are all united into that one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. The word “Jesus” and the word “Jehovah” mean “Jehovah saves” or “Jehovah is salvation” and the only savior recorded in scripture is the Lord. “I am the Lord your God the Holy One of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior.” Where is he? Crucified within you. Having limited himself to man by assuming the state of death, God transcends the limitation of this little garment and overcomes death.

Everything in this world waxes, wanes, and vanishes. There is nothing here that is eternal, nothing immortal. We speak of someone having immortality in his architecture or his music, but that is nonsense. This is a world of death where even the most concrete mountain decays. But there is something buried in man that is immortal, destined to overcome his self-imposed limitation. And when he rises in you, you are the one who is rising. And when the union takes place, it is not another. Without loss of identity you will wear the garment of the Risen Christ. Without loss of identity every child born of woman will wear the one garment of the Risen Christ.

Don’t ask me to explain the mystery of how one can contain all, but it does. You might just as well as ask how your body can contain billions of cells, or your brain billions of atoms – I don’t know. How can I say that my own loins contain as many children as I am capable of siring? They all come from me, yet they seem to be many bodies when they enter this world; but in the end they will all be gathered back into the one body.

Now a fragmented one, when you are regathered into the one body you are far greater than you were prior to the fragmentation, for truth is an ever increasing illumination. There is no such thing as ultimate truth. If that were true it would be stagnation. Truth is forever increasing, and so is power and so is wisdom.

God buried his creative seed in you and as it begins to awaken you are transformed in consciousness. As we are told in Philippians: “He will change my lowly body to be of one form with his glorious body.” This is done when Christ is formed in you. Your lowly body is transformed to be of one form with his glorious body, for as he is formed in you he is your very self. And when you are raised from the dead you must be he, for only the Lord is raised. You are told: “God raised the Lord, and we are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ within us.” If Jesus Christ is within, and I am born anew through his resurrection, and I do not see another but know I resurrected, then I have found him – not as another, but as my own wonderful human imagination. Now put him to the test.

Let me give you something tonight to put your mental teeth into. A friend of mine who is here tonight told me of an experience he had in a dream. He was an actor, playing the part and wearing the costume of a Greek. In the scene he was to be shot, and the actor who was to shoot him was told to use a blank, but this night the bullet was real. As he fell to the floor, he rose from that body, completely restored to life and said: “Why that S.O.B. -he shot me!” Then he awoke.

Last week Milton Berle’s nephew, a fine young lad in his twenties, was simulating the catching of a car thief. (It was a drama, too, for it was not an actual event). The deputy didn’t know his gun was loaded, but as Berle – now playing the part of the thief – began to run as directed, the deputy pulled his gun and shot him.

Now, if it would give the boy’s family any comfort, I would tell them that their son has experienced the resurrection. He has experienced the birth from above. He has experienced the Fatherhood of God by the discovery of the only begotten Son, David, who calls him Father, and is now waiting for the final curtain – in the form of a dove – to descend. I say this, for if the taking of innocent blood results in redemption (as it does in my friend’s case), then the killing of young Berle also results in redemption.

If one could only see that everything in this world is moving for good because God planned it all. “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand. I will not turn back until all that I have planned is perfectly fulfilled.” That’s what we are told in scripture. And all things work for good to those who love the Lord, and I am quite sure the young boy attended some form of synagogue or church and there was a measure of love there.

If one goes into battle to kill and be killed, that’s not innocent blood. But when someone innocently walks by – perhaps in a protest march – and someone kills him, his is innocent blood. He had no intention of killing anyone, but walked unarmed when shot. Now, what a blessing this seeming disaster would be if this innocent blood results in redemption, which is a complete lifting up and raising oneself from this wheel of recurrence, this eternal death!

So I tell you: the Lord Jesus Christ wakes in you, and when he wakes, you are he, for in the end there is Jesus only. Climbing the mountain you see Moses – the prototype of the law, and Elijah – the prototype of the promise. But when you return from the mountaintop, now fully awake, the prototype of both the law and the promise have vanished, and you walk knowing yourself to be the embodiment and fulfillment of all law and prophecy; so in the end there is Jesus only, and you are he.

There is nothing but Jesus, who is Jehovah. It is he who is playing all the parts, for there is nothing but God. So in the end everyone will awake, for everyone is that being who is the Elohim, the compound unity of one made up of others. We are the gods who agreed to the unity of dreaming in concert. That’s the oneness. Here is the dreamer, the assemblage of the gods in perfect agreement. In one consciousness we agree to the play and become fragmented, but only the one God is playing all the parts. You say, “I am” before you say anything and I say, “I am” before I say “Neville”. If your name is John, before you say, “John” you say, “I am.” That’s the name of God. He has no other name.

You can’t divide I am, yet you do see it fragmented when you see another. You may look at a fragmentation, but you cannot divide I am. How can you? “Go and tell them that I am is my name forever. This is the name by which I shall be known throughout all generations.” You can’t divide it! You may ask a question and a seeming other may answer, but their reply comes from a source who says, “I am” Grace, “I am” Jan, “I am” Paul, or “I am” Bill. All responses precede the mask they wear by saying “I am”, so in the end there is only one God, only One, nothing but God!

This wonderful story is true. I am speaking, not from hearsay or speculation. I am not theorizing, but telling you what I know from experience. I am like Paul; I must remain and tell it because of the need, and I tell it from morning ‘till night, and some will believe while others disbelieve. But when I go, those who believe will continue the message and the others will eventually believe. No one will be lost, for in the end everyone will be redeemed, because if one is gone, the whole is not put together. There will be a missing part in the puzzle, and no one worthy of the name of God would leave a piece out. He can’t push it in; he has to make it fit as it ought to. Everything has to fit, for in the beginning was a plan and in the end the plan will be fulfilled. All will awaken to the knowledge that they are God. There is nothing but God.

But no one can become conscious on the higher level by any good work that he does. You can’t earn it. There is no such thing as accumulating merit; it’s simply “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” Each in his own good time. We are all gathered together, one after the other, but each in his own good time. There is a plan to the entire thing, and the will of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. “In the latter days” (as told us in the Book of Jeremiah) “you will understand it perfectly.” You will see how everything was done according to a definite plan.

Now let us go into the silence.

HIS NAME

December 22, 2013

Neville 02-26-1963

The Bible is not a product of human beings; it is not constructed by man. It is the history of man’s discovery by God’s revelation of the changing name of God, and it increases in its value to man. In Genesis 4:26 we are told that a child was born whose name was Enosh, born to Sarah, and men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

That is the first time that man began to call upon the name of the Lord. The word Enosh means “mortal man,” something that is fragile, something that simply wears out and disappears. Mortal man began to ask concerning his origin: Why am I here, what is the cause of the phenomena of life?

The next time we see it is in the 32nd chapter of Genesis. This is the night, we are told, a man called Jacob (the supplanter) wrestled with God, and when it came to the breaking of the day God said to him: “Let me depart.” And he said: “I will not let you depart until you bless me.” And God blessed him. Then he said to God: “What is your name?” and God answered: “Why do you ask my name?” He would not tell him, so Jacob called the spot where God touched him “Peniel,” which means “the face of God,” for said he “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.” Then as the sun rose Jacob faltered because where God had touched shrank. It was the sinew upon his thigh. That is what man at that level of consciousness believed to be the creative power of the universe.

Today, 1963, you and I are witnesses to the most fantastic things that man has conceived. Missiles in space that can reach the sun, these IBM machines, electronic brain – but nothing that man has ever devised or brought to birth can compare to a child. Nothing in this world that man can conceive is comparable to the brain of a child. For the child conceived the instrument that now frightens us. We have a bomb, nuclear bomb, but that can’t compare to the brain that conceived it, no matter what we do with it. Read Genesis 32, where man once thought the sex act was God. The very act of producing the most sensitive thing in the world is the form of a child. (There isn’t a part of the world that someone hasn’t erected phallic images in its worship of God.)

Now we turn to the Book of Exodus, where the name changes because it wasn’t yet revealed. Man began to call upon the name of the Lord, but they didn’t know what to call upon; they thought it was sex. Read Exodus 3:13-15, how God reveals himself to his chosen vessel, Moses. And Moses said to the Lord: “When I come to the people of Israel and I say to them, ‘the Lord, your God, has sent me unto you,’ and they ask me ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say? And the Lord answered: “I AM who I AM.” The words are every form of the verb “to be” – “I AM that I AM” – I will be what I will be. “Say unto them, ‘I AM has sent me unto you.'” So when you come to the people of Israel, say to them the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you, and this is my name forever: “I AM.” No other. And this will lead you out of the wilderness into the promised land. That was the second grand revelation of the name of God. Man thought it was the creative act. Who could deny that nothing in this world that man has ever created was comparable to that of a child – nothing. And he has to trace it back to his origin of the act, and all of a sudden it came out of this fantastic organism. And then comes a revelation of another kind, that the name is “I AM.”

Then comes the final revelation, which we find in the New Testament, and he brings something entirely different that man has not seen before. He reveals the name as “Father.” “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given unto me, that they may be one as you and I are one.” He gave them the name that was his name and the name was ‘Father” – the final revelation of God to man concerning who he really is, his father. “So in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son.” If he has spoken by a son, then he is [a] father. And so God speaks to man in his final days through his son, and the son reveals to that man that he is the father of that son, and then – and only then, does man know who he really is. But until that day comes take the second revelation of the name of God, which is “I AM” and use it and use it wisely. You can use it for anything in the world. You are told if you blaspheme against his name you must be stoned to death, as told us in Leviticus 24:16: “Anyone who blasphemes against the name I AM,” and the name has already been revealed in Leviticus 3. Exodus 2 revealed the name. Now if you blaspheme against this name, stone him to death.

One who was born of a Hebrew woman who knew an Egyptian man, cursed the name of God, and they listened to see what God would say to do to such a man: stone him to death. Stone does not mean that you take stones and throw at him, as people will do. The stones are the literal facts of life. How could I blaspheme against the name of God? With God all things are possible, so his name is “I AM.” And I dare to say: “I am unwanted; I am poor; I am ill; I am completely ignored in this world.” Well, this is blasphemy against God. For it is not what I really want in this world, or for anyone else that I love. So here I am blaspheming against God.

I am told in John 8: “Except you believe that I am he you shall die in your sins.” “Sin” is missing the mark. If I don’t believe that I am the man I want to be, I remain where I am at that moment of not daring to assume that I am the man that I want to be, and remain in that limitation, so I die, missing the mark. So the being you really are – if the second revelation is true (and I can tell you it is true, that his name is “I AM”) – it doesn’t mean you worship something on the outside when you say, “I am.” And the day that you actually contact it as though the “I-thou” concept was within yourself, you feel who you really are.

Now here is a true story which I heard this last Saturday. I am not a member of the Turf Club, but I go occasionally when I am invited and someone takes me. So last Saturday I and my wife were taken to the Turf Club. I was introduced to this little man who sat just one row below. Strange, weird little fellow, and then they told me his story. He had come here penniless from Kentucky. How he got the money necessary to buy a small little plot of land, I do not know, that was not told me; but he bought a small little plot of land in Ventura County. He wanted to have oil, so he would sleep on the land itself. He didn’t build some little shack – he slept right on the ground. With his head to the ground he would hear oil coming in, he would smell oil, and he would come home sometimes in the morning at 6 A.M. and his wife was distraught. “What has happened to you?” He was sleeping on the land bringing it in.

Today the man – I would say he is ten years my senior, which is 68, pushing 70 – he has no financial problems. He has given away fortunes. He is worth over six million, so he told me himself, but now he has another problem, and he has forgotten the name of God. His present problem is boredom. He goes to the track five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday. If he drops ten thousand, it’s no problem, if he drops twenty thousand, that’s no problem. But he is bored and he is not physically well, and he doesn’t remember how he brought oil into being by the name of God. When he put his head on that earth and began to listen, who was listening? If you would say to him: “What are you doing?” “I am smelling oil.” That’s what he would say. You have called the name of God. “I am smelling oil. I am hearing oil,” is what he would say. He brought it all in, but he doesn’t remember the name of God.

Now he is saying: “I am unwell.” He is blaspheming the name of God. You are told: The man who blasphemes the name of God, stone him to death.” The stone is “showing the facts of life,” so he is showing the facts of life. “You aren’t feeling well, are you?” So you see all the things in the world wrong with him, and you tell him. These are the stones, but he has forgotten and those around him don’t know. He once used the name of God wisely and brought wealth into this world. He could bring health into this world if he would use the name of God.

“It is my name forever,” said God in Exodus 3. But I will reveal a still greater name as man begins to awaken, and the final name is “Father.” And so: “Show us the Father,” and you’ll be satisfied. “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Phillip? He who has seen me has seen the Father, how then can you say ‘show us the Father?'” So here, I tell you, I am the father, and no one knows he is the father. ‘Holy Father keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me,’ that they may be one even as we are one.” There is no way in this world that you and I will know we are one, save through this last act of God revealing himself, when he gives you his last name, which is “Father.” I am the Father, that I do know, and you will be the Father of the same and only begotten Son of God. And when you see him, as I have seen him – and you will see him, and you are his Father – then you and I are one. For I can’t be the father of your son and not be you. And that is God’s final revelation to man on this level.

So, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” And the son reveals the nature of the father. No one knows the father except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Until that day comes, use the second revelation – which is forever his name – and use it wisely, as we are told in the 9th Psalm, 10th verse: “Those who know thy name trust in thee.” If you know the name. The name is the individual himself. God’s name is I AM and that is God. So tonight if you know the name, believe it, trust in his name. And you listen as though you heard what you would hear, were you the man you want to be, and trust in his name, and he will never forsake you.

Here the name changes as man begins to awaken as God, and the final revelation – I know of no greater chapter than the 17th of John, where he reveals himself and gives himself to man. “Holy Father glorify me with thine own self.” He doesn’t want any other glory. It’s God himself giving himself to man, for that is his purpose. And when he succeeds in his purpose the man to whom he has given himself is God and God is “Father,” the final revelation. Therefore, there must be a child. Where is the child if I am a father? And here comes the child into being and he is David, God’s only begotten son. “David, thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee.” That is concealed in man until that last moment when the veil is lifted and the fatherhood is revealed to man through the nature of the son. There you see David, and David tells you who you are. You are his father, he calls you father, and calling you father, then the 89th Psalm is fulfilled: “I have found David” and his cry unto me: “Thou art my father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.” And you see him and yet there is no change in your I AM-ness. The self that becomes his father is the same self that it was before, only a far greater self. It includes fatherhood, but the same sense of I AM-ness. You haven’t changed your distinct individuality, but now it is enlarged to include fatherhood, and that father is God. And you tell it to the world in the hope you can make it as clear as it is to you.

Whether you accept it or reject it, it is true and the day must come, in time, when each individual will have the same experience and he will pass through it all. Until that happens use his name wisely, as revealed to us through his prophet Moses in the 3rd chapter of Exodus. Use it for wealth, health, or recognition, but don’t blaspheme against the name of God. “Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

So, we are told: “They took up stones to throw at him, because he had offended them, that he had blasphemed the name of God for he claimed ‘I am God.'” That was blasphemy on their level and they took up stones to throw at him. What stones? They told him they knew his father. They knew his earthly mother, his brothers, and his sisters, and they named them. They said: I know your father and mother, Joseph and Mary, and they named the four brothers. They implied multiple sisters. And then they began to show him the facts of life, and the facts contradicted his claim. Therefore they were stoning him with the facts of life. These were the stones. Then he disappeared out of their midst. He could not argue with that mind, because they knew exactly his physical background, and he is telling them: “If you will receive what I tell you, I will give you power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This verse is something entirely different in Greek physiology. “To be born of blood” they meant that the seed of man mingled with the blood of woman, and from this union came a child. To be born of the “will of the flesh” is by sexual impulse. It wasn’t born that way. To be born of man is to have human parentage. It wasn’t born that way. It was born of God. Something entirely different, where man suddenly awakes within himself and he steps out of his own skull to find out that all along he has been sleeping.

Then you read these words in Revelation 1:18: “And he thought himself alive and he was dead.” Here a man was dead, and all along he believed he was alive. The whole vast world, the sleep is so profound, it is so deep, he doesn’t know he is sleeping. And the sleep is so deep he is likened spiritually to a dead man. Then one day, in God’s own wonderful time, he awakens himself in man and brings him forth, and then he awakes for the first time to realize all through the ages he has been dead but he didn’t know it. But now he is resurrected by the mercy of God. He thought he was asleep while he thought he was awake, and yet he was dead.

In the meanwhile, you who think yourself alive, try this principle by the use of God’s name. It will not fail you, I promise you it will not. For one thing bear in mind this: you may have wealth tonight and have it heavily insured – furniture, jewelry, furs, but you left it when you came here tonight, left it wherever you have this outside wealth. You may have stocks and bonds, they may be insured, but you left them wherever they are, maybe in vaults, your homes. Standing here just about two years ago I left this platform and looked out and saw these enormous flames and all these beautiful homes burning. They were all left behind wherever the people were, all consumed in a matter of moments. But one thing you can’t leave behind, and you always take it with you after you find the name. Can you go any place where you can leave behind your “I AM”? Where can you go in this world where you will leave behind you the only power in the world, “I AM”? “Those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” Not in the bank, not in their social position, their financial, intellectual, or any other position. “Put their trust in thee,” Who are you? “I AM.” So everyone who came here tonight brought that name with them. When you leave here you are going to take it with you. Maybe you don’t know you carried it with you. You can have a treasure and not know you have it. If I had a billion dollars deposited in the bank but I didn’t know it, I could die of starvation for want of a dollar; and yet I could sign a check if I knew I had it, and would withdraw it for my earthly need.

You can’t leave behind you God’s name. He’s put himself into you, your very being, your own I AM-ness – that is God. And because it is God, don’t blaspheme against the name. Use it wisely, use it lovingly, and I tell you: “What are you hearing?” And you tell me: I am hearing so and so, or I am thinking so and so. Well, see to it that what you are hearing, feeling, what you are thinking, is in harmony with your highest ideal. For you will draw it out just as this man drew out his oil from this little bit of dirt, and today he is worth millions – but bored. You will be able to use it wisely through your earthly days, and maybe in this embodiment the final one will be revealed to you, but only God knows when he reveals the final one.

I can talk about it and tell you about it but I cannot lift the curtain for you -only the son himself can reveal you as the father. I can tell you: you are going to be the father, that I do know, but I have no power to tear that curtain and show you David. He and he alone will reveal you as the father. “No one knows who the son is except anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.” But I will tell you: one day he is going to tear that curtain from the mind and stand before you and call you father. You will know exactly who he is; there will be no doubt in your mind whatsoever. You are looking at your only begotten son. Begotten not by any woman in this world. Begotten out of your own wonderful being – your mind, and it’s David. And he will be just as he is described in the Book of Samuel, no doubt about it.

I can’t tell you the thrill that is in store for you after it happens. You are so excited you can’t think of anything but. You may bore your friends, you may bore everyone that you meet, because you can’t think of anything but this enormous event that has happened to you, this heavenly thing that has taken place. You may be a single man, a man who has never known a woman in this world, but all of a sudden you are a father, and you are a father in the true sense of the word. Then you will know he was “not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” and he calls you father, and you know God is his father. He tells you exactly who you are.

Then you have to walk the earth for the remaining years shut out, because you are still wearing the garment of flesh. And although you are now heir to a present and to a promise that has already been fulfilled, you still cannot share it with others, so that it cannot become to you actual or fully realized in you until you take off the garment for the last time. And then you are one with the heavenly host. Everyone is destined – you can’t brag about it, you can’t crow about it, because you didn’t earn it. It was all God’s plan from the beginning: “He who began a good work in you” at that moment brought it to completion “at the day of Jesus Christ.” And Jesus Christ is God the Father. Therefore, if Jesus Christ is God the Father, and David calls him “Lord,” who are you? Are you not then Jesus Christ? Then you realize the words: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee, unless of course you fail to meet the test.” I hope you realize that we have not failed in our effort.

Eventually you will read the words: And the whole thing disappears, and there was Jesus only. Moses was present, Elijah was present, they all saw the glory of God, and when it all subsided there was Jesus only. For at the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bend and every tongue will confess that he is Lord, the glory of God the Father. It is only Jesus and he has one son and he is sharing his son with you – not walking the street with you as a friend, but as your son. He gives himself to every being in the world, and there is no way he can prove that he actually gave that gift of himself to you, save as David, his only begotten son, as your son. The Bible in miniature is in John 3:10. “And God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.” People think he gave his only begotten son and his name is Jesus Christ. No! Jesus Christ by his own confession is God the Father. “You see me Phillip 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?”

So the son given could not be that being who calls himself father, and the father is Jesus Christ. Who called him father? David. So he asked the question; nobody asked him. He said: “I am the Father.” Then where is the child? So he brings up the question: “What do you think of Christ?” and they said: “The son of David.” Then why does David in the spirit call him Lord? If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son? And no one asked any further questions. David in the spirit calls him “Adonai,” a word used by every child when it refers to its father. Every child spoke of its father as “Adonai,” translated in the English: “My Lord.” So David called him “My father.” So he tells you who he is and who David is relative to himself. So David is going to call every being in this world: “my father.” And because God is one and his name is one, and at that name every knee must bow, you are destined to know yourself to be Christ Jesus, or God the Father.

But until it is revealed to you, use his name as revealed through his prophet Moses. “And when you go to them just tell them ‘I AM’ has sent me unto you.” Lead them out of the wilderness into light by my name. When you can lead yourself today, no matter where you are, whether you are now bewildered, whether you are unwanted (as you think you are), or unemployed, (as you may be) – lead yourself from these states of barrenness into states of fruition, a fruitful state, in the name. Just simply assume “I AM”, and you name it, hear it, smell it, see it to the best of your ability, and to the degree that you remain loyal to what you are imagining and hearing, you will actually externalize it in your world. Don’t judge it before you try it.

Now if what I have said this night offends, should it be in conflict with what you believed when you came here, again I go back to Scripture: “And he offended them and then they sold him for thirty pieces of silver.” Let me go back into the Book of Leviticus. Here we are told: “If an ox gored a slave, male or female, then the owner of the ox must pay to the owner of the slave thirty pieces of silver and then the ox must be stoned.” The symbol of Christ is that of an ox. If the Christian doctrine offends, well then he has gored you by whatever he has to say. And now, having gored it, the slave will be censured, that he must be sold for thirty pieces of silver. So, you always fulfill Scripture. The word will always be fulfilled. The prototype of Jesus the Christ was Joseph, and he was sold for twenty pieces of silver. Twenty means “disappointed expectancy.” Thirty is divine perfection. Reduce it to a three and three is also associated with resurrection. On the third day the earth rose up out of the deep. So here, if I should offend you by what I say, then make me sorry for my thirty pieces of silver, for Scripture is all about me. For “If the ox gores and in any way hurts a slave” . . . then the ox must be stoned with the facts of life.

People will always throw the bricks at you and remind you of “When they knew you,” or even as they know you – for we are all limited as we wear these garments. No man in this world can tell me while he wears the garment that he is not limited. President Kennedy is frightfully limited in his office as President. Bricks are coming all over the place – what he promised in his campaign to get the office, and what he has delivered. And the conflict between what he promised and what he has delivered so far, you could throw all the bricks in the world at him. And he is fully aware of it. You can throw it at the Pope, throw it at the Queen of England, throw it at any person in this world for the lack of getting any ambition of theirs. If I took you into my secret and told you my ambition, and you as a friend know I have not realized it, and you throw [at] me all the rocks in the world, and remind me of what I told you against what I have accomplished – that is true of every being in the world. Nevertheless, whether you accomplish them or not, go back and apply this principle towards the fulfillment of your dreams.

I can tell you: in my own case, small as it has been, it has all been when I was faithful to the use of God’s name. When I dared to assume that I am what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny it, and I remained faithful to it, then I invariably realized it. There have been unnumbered times when I have not been faithful to it. I coasted, as we all coast after a while. Then we are jacked up suddenly and we have to go back to the use of the name. And so, “Those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” Not in anything outside of thee. And your name is “I AM,” and it is your name forever and forever. So put your trust in the name of God by walking out of here tonight in the belief that you are already the man, the woman you would like to be and see the world as you would see it, were it true. And to the degree you remain loyal to that assumption, to that degree you will externalize it and reap it as fruit within this world.

Now let us go into the silence.

I AM IN YOU

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 09-30-1968

As Paul said to Timothy: “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion.” Scripture is not secular history, but a mystery which is most important that we understand!

Speaking to his disciples, Jesus said: “In that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you.” (John 14) The phrase “in that day” is an eschatological term meaning, “at the end of the journey.” In other words, when this age of Caesar comes to its end, you will experience the truth of scripture, and – understanding – you will say: “I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you.”

It is in you, as a person, that the nature of God reveals himself in a series of supernatural experiences. When these take place in a first person, singular, present tense experience, all arguments, doubts, and questions regarding your true identity are hushed. From that moment on, like Paul, you will say: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood. I did not receive my gospel from a man. I was not taught it. It came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

While in Barbados this summer, my sister asked if my Christ was once a man. My answer to her undoubtedly was the same Paul gave when asked a similar question. I said: “Was? He is the heavenly man!” Then quoting Paul I said: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

Do not think of Christ as some little boy who was born in some strange manner two thousand years ago. We are dealing with a cosmic principle, where God actually became man that man may become God.

The process has started. Resurrection has begun, but it is not over. Those who teach that the resurrection is over are misleading the faithful, for – like Paul – everyone can say: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Henceforth 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.”

I have stood in the presence of the Risen Lord. I leave seen the Ancient of Days, who is gathering us one by one into his body to become one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

You, as a person, will not be less than the Risen Lord, for there is only one Spirit. There is only one Lord and you will know yourself to be He! No one will be above you. I AM the same body, the same Lord, the same Spirit, the same God and Father of all. Without loss of identity, we will all know ourselves to be this one unity of being. We will know from experience that I AM in you and you are in me!

When I had finished explaining this to Daphne, I don’t think she was any more impressed than that chair over there. It takes time, but it is so important for you to let go of all intermediaries between yourself and God!

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is the first book in the New Testament. In this letter, Paul declares his independence from men and his dependence upon God. He repudiates all authorities, all institutions, all customs, all laws that interfere with the individual’s direct access to his God. Paul had no intermediary. He never knew a human Christ, only the Risen Lord, who appeared to him as he appeared to me.

In my own case, I was taken in Spirit into the presence of the Risen Lord, and – strangely enough – when he asked me what was the greatest thing in the world, I answered in the words of Paul. So I ask you: who is Paul? Is he not the first of the chosen who broke the seal and discovered the mystery which was shown to Abraham?

Paul persecuted everyone who claimed to be a member of the way, when suddenly the revelation broke, causing him to proclaim the truth. It was Paul who said: “If I have been united with Christ in a death like his, I shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

Paul did not claim that the resurrection was over. He states that the crucifixion is over, because the garment of flesh is worn by one who is crucified. God chose you in him before the foundation of the world. We will be united with him in a resurrection like his – not because of any acquired merit on our part, but because he chose to be united to us in a death like his.

You were chosen in him before the drama we call the world began. And any suffering you may go through here means nothing. Paul knew this, and said: “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing to the glory which is to be revealed in us.”

Now, the Old [sic] Testament tells us: “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.” The Greek word logos (translated as “Word”) means “meaning; a plan; a plot; a purpose.” Here we see that God had a plan, a purpose – which was to give himself to you one hundred per cent. This he has done; so whatever he was before he became you, you will know yourself to be.

It is in you, as a person, that the nature of God reveals himself. This you will know when you experience the entire story of the Lord Jesus Christ in the first person, present tense. Then when you tell those who love you, they will not believe you, because they know your weaknesses and limitations.

Knowing you are not schooled in theology, they cannot see the relationship between you and the one spoken of in the seventh chapter of John: “How does this man have such learning seeing as how he has never studied?” Like the Sanhedrin, they will not understand how a man with no learning could claim that the Old Testament had been fulfilled in him.

The prophets foretold of the coming of God, but they did not say how. Having taken upon himself man’s nature, God unfolds his nature in man, and man becomes God. If God was a father prior to choosing you, and he becomes you – are you not a father? Yes, but there is no way to prove this, unless God’s son appears to identify you. Only when God’s son unfolds within you, will you know that you are God.

Only the Risen Christ is aware of his true identity. It is he who says: “I am in you and you are in me, Lo we are one.” The Risen Christ is the eternal heavenly man, who is God. You are a man. Learn to adore your own humanity, who is God. Man is looking for some impersonal force to worship, but God is man!

When I stood in his presence, I answered his question in the words of Paul. Since then I have asked myself: who is Paul? Was he not the beginner of the Christian faith? Our New Testament records thirteen of his letters, all written twenty years prior to the gospels.

In his first letter to the Galatians, Paul went out on a limb by declaring his independence from all organizations. That was in the day when you could not get a job unless you were a member of the synagogue; yet Paul refused to accept any intermediary between himself and the Risen Lord, whom he had persecuted in his blindness.

One day the Risen Christ will bring you into his presence. He will incorporate you into his body by an embrace from which you will be one forever and ever. This I know from experience.

So when I tell you I am in you, I mean it literally, for I am one with the Risen Christ. I am speaking the words of the Risen Christ, not Neville. After we embraced, he sent me, yet he has never separated himself from me. How can I be one with the body who sent me? Because “He who sees me, sees him who sent me.”

Limited to the concept of three-dimensional space, we think of being sent out of the room while the sender remains; but in the Spirit world of which I speak, when one is united with the Lord he becomes one with him in spirit.

Dwell upon this being who became you. Return to the point of being chosen before that the world was. Try to remember when he made known unto you the mystery of his plan which gives meaning to your life – this mystery which was set forth in Christ for the fullness of time.

The Word, giving meaning to the world, was with God and was God. That meaning is Christ, a plan which cannot fail to fulfill its purpose, which is to unfold and reveal you as God. Walking this earth right now, you are God’s Word, moving towards fulfillment.

Now, while we are here waiting for God’s plan to unfold, we should continue to apply God’s law. Here is a simple story. My friend wrote, saying: “When my little boy was quite young, as a family we called the Sears’ Christmas catalog, the “Wish Book”. Our son would spend hours looking through the pages of toys, deciding what he wanted for Christmas. This we have done for the past eight years. I am enclosing a card advertising the current issue of that catalog. As you will see, it is now called “The Sears Wish Book!”

Whoever has that account thinks this is an original idea, yet my friend knows she is its creator. You see, there is no fiction. How can there be fiction in a world where imagining creates reality? For eight years her son has known the catalog to be a wish book, and now that has become its official name. If something you have imagined is delayed producing its reality for you, keep this story in mind.

I know we are all children and want our desires instantly fulfilled, but countries plan for unborn generations. Parents with large estates plan, not only for the present little ones, but for the offsprings of their offsprings.

You and I, however, are anxious and find it difficult to wait. Time and time again, ladies have told me they wanted to be married now, only to confess they are not yet divorced. I have heard them say there was only one man.
Either that man or no man, yet they have married another. What they really wanted was to be happily married. Claiming it had to be that man, I have asked: “If he dropped dead right now would you still have the urge for companionship? If you would, then he is not the only man.”

Know what you want in life and do not condition it. If your desire is to be happily married, claim you are. Wanting a certain home, claim you have it. Don’t think you cannot afford it, simply play the wishing game.

Find your desire in God’s wish book. Speaking to you through the medium of desire, make your desire real by feeling its truth. View the world from its fulfillment. Lose yourself in the feeling of possession and give it all the tones of reality. Fulfill every desire as you walk towards the fulfillment of your real purpose in life, which is to awaken God in you.

You are not going to become a little god to run around with other little gods, for there is only one God. Don’t forget the great Sh’ma: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” You are destined to awaken as that one God and Father of all.

When I awoke in this simple little thing called man, I wondered how this mortal being could bear such responsibility. Housed in this garment of flesh called Neville, aware of all of its weaknesses, God’s purpose has unfolded; yet I have no way to prove it to anyone.

I cannot convince you unless you have faith. I have shared my experiences in the written form, giving passages of scripture to support them. Having reached the end of the journey, I now know from experience that we enter human history to fulfill scripture.

I tell you: the story of Christ is an acted parable, a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears (or reads) it to discover the fictitious character and learn its meaning.

In the parable the actor takes a little child in his arms and says: “This is the kingdom of heaven. Unless you accept the kingdom as a little child, you cannot enter it.” One day you will be that actor, and the little child in your arms will symbolize your entrance into heaven. It is a signal of God’s birth – not from the womb of a woman, but from the skull of man, where God is crucified. His name is I AM. And when you awaken you will say, I AM awake. You will not look around for any other, for you will be alone; and from then on scripture will fulfill itself within you.

In the not distant future you will depart this world to discover that death will force you to modify, or radically change, any ideas which you have championed here. I received a notice today that my good friend, Randy, died. In 1952, while recuperating from a serious operation, Randy came to the hospital to visit me. He was my physician as well as my friend, but was not aware of what I teach. Seeing the Bible I had brought with me, Randy questioned my interest in it.

Taking the story of Esau and Jacob, I told him how Esau represented my outer world. That I could close my eyes to it and clothe Jacob (who represented what I wanted clothed in outer reality) with the skins of Esau. Believing in the reality of what I am doing, I deceive myself into believing that my subjective state is now an objective reality.

Well, to Randy that was not religion. To him religion meant going to church every Sunday morning and spending an hour there. That was something to be done, like walking with a cane because you had one and felt undressed without it. His week was not complete unless he went to church on Sunday. Randy has been gone now a few weeks and, undoubtedly is now modifying his beliefs – but it will take time.

You do not awaken there as some wise person. If you are foolish here, you are foolish there. If you are a thief here, you are a thief there. If a man is not a thief, no matter what is put before him he would not take it; therefore there is no temptation, no desire to change. Place all the liquor in the world before a man who does not drink and he will not be tempted. All of the world’s tobacco will not interest a man who does not smoke, therefore there is no temptation.

When a man is regenerated, he is no longer in the world of generation. Everyone could undress before him, yet he would not be tempted, because his energies have been turned up into regeneration.

Everyone will be regenerated and overcome without effort, for when the visions happen, you change. Change does not occur prior to the visions, because fitness is the consequence – not the condition – of the kingdom of heaven. You are not chosen because of your acquired merit. The minute the vision takes place, the consequence has occurred.

When you read the words of Christ in the New Testament, think of the Risen Christ, for the heavenly man is speaking. We are all rising into the one body of Christ without loss of identity. I will know you better and more intimately there than I could ever know you here, for the mask we wear here causes a barrier between us. But in the New Age we will be intimate eternal brothers, all sharing the one body as the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all.

Now let us go into the silence.

I AM THE CAUSE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-19-1969

According to a rabbical principle, that which is not written in scripture is non-existent. The story of Jesus Christ follows this principle.

The unknown author of the Book of Luke (like all the others) wrote only of his own experiences. Turning to his disciplined mind in self contemplation, he is Jesus turning to his disciples and saying: “`Scripture must be fulfilled in me. All that is written about me must be fulfilled.’ Beginning with Moses and the prophets, and the psalms he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they said to one another, `Did not our hearts burn while he opened to us the scriptures?’ Then he said to them, `Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Luke is speaking of the Christ in you, for any Christ coming from without is a false Christ, taught by false teachers.

Peter tells us: “Scoffers will come in the last days scoffing and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? Forever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.”‘ Certainly they do. Graft, war, dirty politics, poverty – you name it, everything will continue forever in this age; so do not look for signs of his coming in the outer world, as this age will continue producing poverty, graft, war, and unlovely things. But when Christ comes it is like a thief in the night. When you least expect it, Christ awakens within you to reveal yourself to yourself.

“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,” for when the Son appears he reveals God as his Father. Until God’s son reveals himself in Man, Man searches on the outside to discover how things are made, but he cannot find the Maker. Our world is God’s handiwork, as told us in the 19th Psalm: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth his handiwork.” Our scientists have discovered how to go to the moon, from which they returned with earth. Then they analyzed it and discovered it to be dead. No matter where man goes he will discover that everything is dead, for God’s handiwork is here and here alone. But, no matter how much his handiwork is analyzed, it will not reveal its maker.

Today three of our citizens received the Nobel Prize for their great work in trying to analyze this wonderful land of ours. They will find many wonderful things about it, but they will never find its maker. He comes only when the individual finds the Son, for it is God’s Son who reveals his maker. I tell you: the Bible is all about you. It is your own personal, spiritual biography. Every child born of woman is recorded in the Bible – not as John Brown or Mary Smith – but as Jesus Christ; for he is the child’s true being, and the Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of his life.

When you read the 9th chapter of Isaiah, you may wonder what it is all about, but may I tell you nothing could be truer. Listen carefully: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called `Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” These revelations do not come in the order the prophets recorded them (or some scribe changed); but the names are true and are revealed in perfect order.

The first name given to you when you fell asleep was “El Shaddai” which means “God Almighty, or Mighty God”. But one day you will awaken! Now completely individualized, you will feel a vibration so great you will think you are going to die; but far from dying, the vibration will awaken you from your long, long sleep. You will awaken within yourself to discover that you have been entombed there for unnumbered centuries. You may not know how you got there and why, but I’ll tell you: you went voluntarily. No one took your life, you laid it down yourself.

You have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again. You deliberately entered the human skull and laid yourself down to dream the dream of life. Mystics claim you have been dreaming there for 6000 years. I have had no vision to support such a time interval, but I can say that when it happened to me I felt as though I had been entombed for unnumbered ages. For a moment I wondered how I got there, and then I remembered scripture: “He is not dead, but sleepeth, I go to awaken him.” One day you, too, will hear the voice of the Son of God and awaken from your sleep of death, for when God sends his Son into your heart crying, “Father,” you will hear it and awaken from your long, self-imposed sleep.

It takes an enormous power for Mighty God to stir himself and awaken to find the symbol of his birth as that of a child. You may think the child that is born and the son which is given are one and the same, but they are not. The son appears 139 days later. It is he who reveals you as God, the Maker and creator of it all. Prior to that moment in time you – like a scientist – look outside of yourself for the cause of all life; but when David – God’s only begotten son – comes from within and calls you Father, you have found the cause. And when your son reveals you as the Father, the cause of all life, you will bear the name Everlasting Father.

Now, the third great revelation is that of Wonderful Counselor. And in scripture the Wonderful Counselor is associated with a serpent. Referred to as the wisest of all of God’s creations, it was the serpent who suggested eating of the tree of knowledge. And when told he would die, the serpent said; “No, you will not truly die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The Wonderful Counselor did not lie, for believing himself to be you, he experienced death but did not really die.

Even though we depart this world and seem to die, we don’t. Instead we are restored to life in a world just like this, to continue our journey for unnumbered centuries.

Now, in the same 3rd chapter of Genesis, the Lord said to the gods: “Behold the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,” just as the serpent said he would. Only by coming down into this world of experience can you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and become as the gods. So we see the 3rd title, Wonderful Counselor, has much to do with the serpent. We are told that: “No one ascends into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the son of man; and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.” When you read these words they do not make sense, but when you experience them – and you will – the third title of Wonderful Counselor is conferred upon you.

Your eyes will be opened then, and you will know good and evil from experience. You will know that you will not die, but will return to the heavenly state from which you – the son of man – descended. And you will ascend like a fiery serpent.

Now, the serpent of scripture is described in the 6th chapter of the Book of Isaiah as the seraphim which surround the throne of God. The seraphim is [sic], by definition, a fiery being with human face, human voice, and human hands. Isaiah gives him six wings: two to cover his face, to cover his feet (which is a euphemism for his creative organs) and he flies with two; but beyond that, this heavenly being, the wisest of all God’s creations, is not described. This is your true identity, for you are the gods who came down.

You are not some little amoeba which came out of the mud; you came down from heaven and emptied yourself of all that you were in order to assume the limitations and weaknesses of the human flesh. You are not pretending that you are man; you became man by assuming poverty, though you were rich. You assumed weakness, though you were strong. You – an infinite being – assumed all these things for their experience. The whole vast world declares your glory, but only here on this little earth is this wonderful work revealed.

Before we came here we were brothers, and one day we will awaken and return to our brotherhood as God the Father, of which it takes all of the brothers to form.

Now the 4th title, Prince of Peace, is sent in the form of a dove. This does not physically happen to you, and when it happens you are the only one who knows it. Read the first chapter, the 10th verse of the Gospel of Mark carefully, and you will see that only the one upon whom the dove descended was aware of it: “When he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens open and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove.” You are destined to have this experience as the fourth title, the Prince of Peace, is conferred upon you. You will bear the four titles, and in so doing you will fulfill scripture. Having foretold it you came down to fulfill it within yourself.

The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. He is God’s word which cannot return to God empty, but must accomplish that which he purposed and prosper in the thing for which it was sent. You are God’s word which was in the beginning. You were not only with God, you were God. Then you fragmented into many sons, and it takes all of the sons to form the Father.

You came into this world to experience its horrors, not to change them. Our politicians promise to eliminate war and poverty, yet admit that they have sold over 13 billion dollars in conventional arms to poverty-ridden nations, as have the communist world. Our politicians have forced nations who can’t afford to feed themselves, to buy what we are manufacturing.

Then, with a pious look, ask people to sign papers to stop war. But you can’t stop it. This world was never intended to be other than what it is: a world of poverty, a world of war, a world of dirty politics, a world of graft. Just read the papers and you will see what is taking place in high places. You aren’t going to change it; it will go on and on because the story of Christ is one of redemption. He redeems himself by lifting himself out of this world in a spiral motion.

This world is based upon a circular principle which repeats itself over and over again, whereas redemption is based upon a spiral principle. Breaking away from the wheel of recurrence, one moves up in a spiral motion – like the seraphim – and is redeemed. We are told that: “As the lightening shines from the east to the west so will the coming of the son of man.”

People are looking for lightening to strike on the outside, but it strikes within. Your head is the Mount of Olives, and your body is that which is split from east to west. One half moves north as one half moves south, leaving a great valley. At the base of your spine you will see a pool of golden, liquid, pulsing light which is the blood of God. Fusing with it, you ascend into your skull like a fiery serpent and your skull reverberates like thunder.

I am telling you what you are going to experience, whether you can accept it or not and I know that you will never disprove it. I have awakened you, momentarily, but you may fall back to sleep again and continue your dream, of which you are its sole author. It’s very easy to be caught up in the reality that you, yourself, are making, even though what you see may frighten you.

You may have many horrors in your dream and believe what you are seeing is a reality outside of yourself and beyond your control, but you alone are writing the script. Haven’t you had a dream where you were scared to death, not knowing you were its cause? The same thing is happening in the waking dream, but man does not know that this, too, is a dream, until he awakes from it in the manner of which I have told you.

One night as you sleep, something will arouse you and you will awaken to find yourself in your skull. You know it is your grave, where only the dead are placed; but you know yourself to be very much alive. Someone must have thought you dead to have placed you there, or you may have entered the place voluntarily and fell asleep to such depth that others thought you were dead. But when the time was fulfilled you heard the cry of the son of God which awakened you, and as you come out of that tomb you are born from above. This is essential, for unless you are born from above you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Everyone is in this world because he is born from below (from the womb of woman), but while here he must be born from above (from the skull). That which comes out has no mother, no father, no beginning of days, or ending of days; for that which is born from the skull is aware of being the Maker of all. You will discover this great truth only when God’s son stands before you and reveals you to yourself.

This tiny planet appears as only a speck when viewed from outer space, yet it is so important; for only here can this biological experiment which expands the power of God and the wisdom of God be cradled. Without this world, God could not grow in wisdom. He would be stagnant if he could not expand beyond what he is. God is an ever increasing illumination, an ever increasing creative power, an ever increasing wisdom and – by reason of this one little speck called earth, where he wears these little garments of mortality – God is holding to the promise he made himself: to awaken within himself and fulfill the play recorded in scripture.

The story of Christ is not what the world is talking about. He isn’t going to change the world. Tomorrow’s generation may think it will be different, but poverty will exist then as it does now. There will be changes in passion and eventually they will return to what they were. It’s like a wheel. It’s a circular principle where nothing changes. The individual changes only when he leaves the wheel in a spiral motion, and that is when he is redeemed. He returns to the world from which he came, enhanced by reason of his experience of death in this world called earth.

The principle of the rabbis is true, so let me repeat it: What is not written in scripture is non-existent. The presidents, kings, and dictators of the world are not recorded in scripture; therefore they are nonexistent. They are merely parts God is playing as he passes through states. The part of a president, a king, or a dictator is a state, and when entered it is animated. It seems so real to its occupant and to those who observe it, but it is only a state.

You can play any part – be it a rich man or a poor man, a beggar or a thief, the known or unknown – once you know they are only parts, only states of consciousness. But if you don’t know this, and are not willing to give up your present state, you will remain there, looking at your desire and not from it. You can become what you would like to be in the twinkle of an eye by the simple act of assumption.

And the day you dare to remain faithful to your assumption, it will begin to externalize itself. And when it does you may return to sleep, just as you do in your night dreams. Becoming possessed by the dream you created in your sleep, you observe your own creation; and if it is a noble dream, you can become so puffed up in your own concept that you forget its creator. Or you can create something ignoble and become so immersed in it you believe in its reality. Anything can be created by a mere assumption. When I dared to assume I was the man I wanted to be, I did not discuss it with others; I simply persisted in my assumption and watched it harden into fact. That persistent act taught me that this world was a dream.

My oldest brother at the age of 18 had no money and no prospects of getting any. But he had a dream. He dreamed of owning a building which housed the family business. Twice a day, on his way to work and return, he would stop opposite a building which occupied an entire block at the widest area of the main street, and there he would imagine seeing the words: Goddard and Sons” on its marquee.

He persisted in this act for two years, when one day a total stranger bought the building for the family, trusting them to pay him back over a period of ten years. That building, which became the foundation of our family’s growth, started in my brother’s imagination. Having nothing on the outside to turn to, my brother had the guts to imagine and believe that his imagination would create his reality. Today I don’t think you could buy the family out for multiple millions, because their gross business last year exceeded $30 million.

Do as my brother did and discover the depth of God in you. Test your imagination, for there is no other God. If you test him and discover that it is he who creates all things by producing tangible proof of his reality in what you did, then no one will be able to persuade you that what happened was a coincidence.

My brother lived by and built his fortune on imagination’s foundation. Of course, having created such a vast enterprise he may go to sleep and believe his one thousand employees are the cause of his incredible wealth. We are all inclined to forget that we are the makers of all that is happening, and – forgetting – we blame our dream. The world is yourself pushed out; but it is so easy to place the blame on an aspect of self rather than on you, the dream’s maker.

Learn to use your imagination consciously, for it will not fail you on this level or on the higher level. But you cannot depart this world by changing your thoughts. It will happen in the fullness of time, when the Father in you who fell asleep begins to stir. Then he awakens you, and when he does, you – Mighty God – will receive the name and carry the special powers of Everlasting Father, Wonderful Counselor, and Prince of Peace. And of your reign there shall be no end, for you will know yourself to be the Jesus Christ men worship outwardly.

The ministers of this world are talking about His coming, trying to interpret signs on the outside. But I tell you, Jesus does not come at the end of human history, for he comes individually. Tonight one of you could experience his coming. No one knows but the Father in you. Ever since that Father fell asleep all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation. So don’t look for any change on the outside.

When the politicians promise change, don’t argue; smile as you have through the centuries, knowing they aren’t going to change anything. The world is made up of infinite states which man falls into unwittingly – or deliberately, as my brother did. He was a poor boy who deliberately moved into the state of wealth. Not knowing how it was going to come about, he simply persisted in his assumption and it hardened into fact.

Do you like what the mirror reflects back to you and your background tells you? If it is not what you would like to live with, don’t accept it. Rather, look into the mirror of your mind and assume that you are what you would like to be. Declaring that you are now it, don’t look away and forget the image reflected there, but persist in your assumption. Live in that awareness morning, noon and night as though it were true, and no power can stop you from experiencing its truth.

This is a world of effects, as told us in the Book of James. If you look into the mirror and, seeing yourself, you turn away and forget what manner of man you look like, you will continue to perpetuate your unlovely state. But if you look into the mirror of your mind and – seeing what you desire to see, continue thinking from that state, you will see it reflect itself in your world. Then one day you will depart the world and return to the world from which you descended, for you are the Elohim, the God spoken of in the scriptures.

Do not be afraid to claim your birthright. An outside God never existed; therefore, don’t make little images of him and stick them on your wall to worship. Is there any cross or image of Jesus Christ in the world that wasn’t made by a man?

There is no description of a person called Jesus Christ, yet there are unnumbered pictures of him throughout the Christian world and people bow before that which is made by human hands. Read the 115th Psalm and see what the psalmist said about any image bowed to as some power that can help or hinder: “They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound out of their throat. Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them.” If anyone should say: “Look, there he is, or here he is,” believe him not; for when the Father of all life appears, you shall know him because you will be one with him!

The Bible is all about you, and you are here in the final picture to fulfill that which you dictated before you came down. The prophets you inspired were only organs of revelation. And God’s son, by his very nature reveals God as his father. So when God’s only begotten son stands before you and reveals you as his father, are you not God the Father? This I know from personal experience. I am not speculating. I am not theorizing. I did not hear it from a man, nor was I taught it.

Like Paul, it came through a revelation of the true meaning of Jesus Christ. It’s all in scripture and everyone will experience it. And when we take off these garments and rise, you and I – as the brothers who have returned – will be in a state of ecstasy, for we will all have the same son. If your son is my son, and our son is his son, are we not one father? There aren’t multiple sons – only one. We are all individualized. We will never lose our individuality, yet we are one in spirit because we have the one son; therefore we are brothers who collectively form God the Father.

Scripture is based upon the principle that the True Man comes here to fulfill. All that is said about the True you in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, must and will be fulfilled. It is my pleasure and my privilege to open your mind that you may understand scripture. That is all I am here to tell you. But you will never really understand my words until you experience them, and you will.

There is no aristocracy of privilege in this story. We are all one! One is no better than the other. I have awakened from the dream of life. Now I only wait for others to awaken. There is nothing I want more than the awakening of all, because without all, the Father is not complete. So I tell my story over and over until everyone hears it and sets their hope fully upon this wonderful story that one day must erupt within them.

Now let us go into the silence.

I AM THE LORD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 02-21-1969

“I am the LORD and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe. I, the LORD, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45) Then John tells us, “As He is, so are we in this world.” Although man is taught the God who creates the weal and the woe is someone other than himself, scripture tells us that as God is, so are we!

The story of Jesus Christ, as well as all of the miracles recorded in the New Testament, are acted parables. In the Book of Luke we find Jesus, now twelve years of age, going up to Jerusalem for the Passover. When the feast ended, his parents – thinking Jesus was in the caravan – did not seek him out until the day was past. After searching for him for three days, when they found him in the temple, his father said: “Son, how could you do this to us? Do you not realize we have been seeking you anxiously?” And Jesus replied: “How is it that you sought me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Here is Christ declaring God to be his father, while his parents, standing before him, do not understand. If you are seeking the cause of the phenomena of your life among your kinsfolk, your acquaintances, or teachers, you will never find it; for you are God’s temple, and the spirit of God dwells in you. The cause of the phenomena of your life is not on the outside, but in your own wonderful human imagination. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? I tell you, the only place you will ever find him is within!

The life of Jesus is a pattern which will unfold in you, an individual, when you discover yourself to be the cause of your life; for as He is, so are you in this world. Our religious leaders teach Christ as someone on the outside who is different; who overcame, and is now living elsewhere; yet Christ in you is your hope of glory, for as He is, you are!

In his book, Luke tells the parable of Jesus, who – upon entering a boat with his disciples, falls asleep as they set sail. When a storm wind descended upon the lake they woke him, saying: “Master we are perishing.” Then He rebuked the wind, and the raging waves became quiet, and there was a great calm. I tell you: the one who fell asleep caused the storm, and is the same being as the one who – upon awakening – quells it; for there is no other.

In this world Christ is asleep, and the wars, confusions, depressions, and horrors, appear because of his dreams. And the world will know no peace, happiness, wealth, or joy, until Christ awakes. If you are unaware of your imaginal activity, you are asleep relative to it. You could be dreaming noble, lovely dreams or ignoble ones; but whatever you dream, Christ will externalize. Man is the ark of God in which Christ – God’s creative power – is contained. I am the ark of God, not a phantom of the earth and sea. I am the ship in which Christ sleeps as he dreams the storms of my life. And when He awakes, I will know calm and weal. Your own wonderful human imagination is Jesus Christ. Now individualized as John, Mary, Sam, or Sue, you are Christ’s outer projection, surrounded by woes and weals because of his dreams. God, as your imagination, can never be so far off as even to be near, for the nearness implies separation. Wherever you are, I am! To say: “I am” is near, is to claim God is another – but there is no other. You and God are one, for He is your wonderful human imagination!

A friend recently shared this vision with me. As he observed buildings, trees, and houses round about him, he realized they were caused by tiny magnetic seeds which were clustered about his feet. As he scraped them off, they instantly reformed themselves to produce automatic changes in his world. What a wonderful experience! In the 40th Psalm we read: “He lifts me up from the pit, out of the miry bog and places my feet upon the Rock.” Here we see the foot, the symbol of God’s creative power, is lifted up and placed upon the Rock – the human imagination! His vision is showing him that he has now become aware of the only causation, and has placed his creative power upon that Rock. In this 40th Psalm the statement is made: “In the volume of the book it is written about me.” My friend’s vision reveals that he has come to that point. That everything which appears magnified on the outside is caused by magnetic seeds around his feet. This is true; for the world is nothing more than a magnified shadow, caused by the magnetic seed called Man. Although the world appears to be large and overpowering, its causation is the power observing it.

Man is the ark of God and everything is contained within him. Asleep, the storms rage; but when man awakes, the stormy seas will be no more.

There is quite a difference between being awake to your imaginal activities and being asleep to them. Awake, you can trace the event taking place on the outside to an imaginal act; but asleep you will find someone or something on the outside to be its cause. But causation is within the one observing the effect. Causation is symbolized as the foot in the 40th and 69th Psalms, as well as in the 10th [chapter] of Romans. In the end, man will overcome and put all things under his foot.

My friend saw the clusters of magnetic seeds around his feet. Although he tried to scrape them off, they reappeared. As Blake said: “The oak is cut down by the ax and the lamb is slain by the knife, but their forms eternal remain forever, returning by the seed of contemplative thought.”

Our world is the storm spoken of in the 8th chapter of Luke. Having entered our body, we have fallen asleep to our creative power. But when we discipline our mind, we quell the storms. The disciples of scripture are disciplined aspects of the mind. Once your five senses are so disciplined you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, only what you desire, then you quell the storms of doubt and fear within you, for you know who you are. No longer will you seek the phenomena of life among your kinsfolk or acquaintances; for when you awaken, you find life in the temple. The world is always looking for new teachers on the outside, when there is nothing there but shadows. Christ is not another. You are Christ, as he is your very self! You will find him, and when you do, you will know that you are God; for a series of events will unfold within you and you will bear witness to your own fatherhood.

I have often thought that the doctrine of the trinity should have been the doctrine of the being, for the trinity is difficult for man to grasp. It’s easier to speak of the doctrine of revealed Christianity as a unity, than as a trinity. When David stands before you as your son, there will be no more trinity. You and I are one when my son David calls you father! Then you will know that everyone in the world is that same being, as they will all have the same son. This is the great doctrine of the unity.

My old friend Ab always began his classes with the statement: “Praise be to that unity which is our unity.” He knew that although we are a diversity of faces, completely individualized, we are the same father of God’s one and only son, who will reveal himself to all, individually, thereby proving our unity of being.

Every scriptural miracle is an acted parable. It is imagination who enters the boat called man and falls asleep in order for the journey of life to begin. Then the financial, marital, physical storms arise according to man’s dreams. He could dream of something lovely and know healthy, happy storms. But if he does not know that the cause of the weal is his imaginal activity, he will continue to dwell in the storms of life until the disciples rouse him to remembrance.

Awake, you are aware of the thoughts you are creating every moment of time, and carry this awareness into your dream world. You will not falter, for – knowing the world you want to build and its cause – you will be constantly aware of what you are imagining. You will no longer seek your desires among things, but will turn within to find they are all waiting to be fulfilled in God’s temple.

Now, the numbers three and eight in scripture are always associated with resurrection. We are told that on the third day the earth rose up out of the deep, and in the Book of Exodus it is said that it came to pass on the eighth day. Luke tells us that when Jesus was twelve years of age, his parents searched three days before finding him in the temple, asking and answering his own questions. The number twelve is telling us that he had arrived at the point of creativity. That he has now resurrected and moved into the Father’s house, for when they found him he said: “Why do you seek me? Do you not know I must be in my Father’s house?” Having identified God as his Father, he goes on to claim: “I and my Father are one.”

Today, as in that day, men cannot believe that imagination is the cause of the phenomena of life. They will agree that an artist can imagine a lovely picture and bring it forth on canvas, but they cannot relate the same technique to a toothache. Yet there is only one cause! I, the Lord, am the cause and there is no other. Besides me there is no God. I form light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe. I, the Lord, am he who does all these things.You cannot blame anyone for your misfortune. You could claim a friend betrayed your trust, therein causing your misfortune; but your friend was not the cause, your dream prompted you to confide in your friend. Causation is not on the outside, it comes from within. As you begin to awake, you discover there is only one God, who is your own wonderful human imagination.

My friend saw tiny, magnetic seeds swirling around his feet, causing the outer world to appear so large. These seeds of contemplative thought are so tiny they are often ignored and even scraped off; but awareness causes them to reform themselves instantly to magnify their new formation in the outer world. If imagination’s seeds did not reform themselves, the outer world would vanish and leave not a trace behind; but they do, for the seeds are contained in man. You have the power to rearrange your thought-seeds to produce a different pattern in your outer world. This is done by a change of attitude. Think of the world as different, and as you do, you have scraped off the little magnetic seeds, thereby causing their rearrangement. This is the world in which we live.

Now, when imagination lifts us up from the pit and places our feet upon the Rock, we stand on our own feet. No longer will we stand upon the foot of another, giving the other either our praise or blame. We can, however, be gracious and kind and thank another for the role he played in our drama. But when we stand on our own feet, we realized that everything that happens – be it good, bad or indifferent – is because of our attitude towards life.

Every person, place, or thing, is animated and rearranged from within; for as He is, so are we. A good Christian would call that statement blasphemy; yet I am quoting the first epistle, the fourth chapter of the Book of John: “As he is, so are we in this world.” This thought follows on the heels of the definition of God as love. And because God is love, He will not change your imaginal act, but will allow it to be externalized. If God changed the act, there would be two of you: one who imagines, and one who changes the imaginal act. But, being all love, God instantly plays the parts designated in your imaginal acts and suffers with you because He is dreaming. But one day Love will awaken within your skull. He will resurrect and you will begin the real drama, which is to discover your true identity. Coming out of your immortal skull, all of the imagery of scripture will surround you. The child and the witnesses will be there; but they will not see you, for you will be spirit. While witnessing your spiritual birth, they will speak of you and identify the child as yours, but you will be invisible to their mortal eye. As the great drama unfolds, it appears to take place externally; yet it is within, for you contain eternity within yourself.

If to you a storm is raging remember, it is only raging because you are not aware of your imaginal activity. By disciplining your thoughts, you rise from the sleep of unawareness, and become aware of what you want to imagine. Then the world will change to conform to the change in you. The storm will subside and there will be a perfect calm.

Do not look for God outside of the temple, for you are God’s temple, and the spirit of God dwells in you. Ask the average person where he thinks God’s temple is, and he will point to a synagogue, cathedral, or church; but God does not dwell in houses made with hands. God is spirit and dwells in his living temple! Imagine – and God is acting. Believe in the reality of what you are now imagining! Rearrange those little clusters around the foot, and when they are fixed with feeling, relax in the knowledge that your outer world will conform to the new fixation. Although the world appears external, its reality is within, as you are its creative power, dreaming the world into being; for you are an immortal being, wearing a garment of mortality. One day you will awaken from this fantastic dream, to find yourself enhanced by having experienced the mystery of death.

I ask you now to take the challenge and change your thinking, although I know it is not an easy thing to do. I have known those who so enjoy hating another that they do not want to change. They seem to receive a certain pleasure out of hating and do not realize that they are only hating themselves.

I remember a man in New York City during the Second World War, who claimed he despised Roosevelt. Every morning when the man shaved, he would talk to himself in the mirror, imagining he was telling Roosevelt everything he disliked about him. The gentleman attended my meetings, and when I confronted him with his imaginal acts, he said: “I pay $10 to see a Broadway show which does not give me the joy I receive during that ten minutes in the morning.” Well, this man created his own storm, for the venom that he spewed out every morning returned to him. He lost his New York City home, then went to Florida, where he lost everything there. I tried to tell him to awake, that he was sleeping and only dreaming that Roosevelt was the cause of his world. But he could not believe me. He came from a Germanic background and could not get over the fact that we were at war with Germany. He blamed Roosevelt, even though he knew Germany had declared war on us. He could not see the war as a bad dream, and he was confusing it, making the storm rage by the pleasure he received telling Roosevelt off as he shaved.

It’s entirely up to you what you think. If you want to hate someone, you can augment it through intensity and persistence. The same thing is true if you want to love someone; for your human imagination is the only God you will ever know, and he is in his temple – that temple you are!

The parents (meaning tradition) sought Jesus on the outside, but when they found him within, he said: “Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” but they could not understand. When I have told rabbis, preachers, and priests, that I have seen David of Biblical fame, they laugh. And when I go further and tell them that David called me father in fulfillment of the 89th Psalm which states: “I have found David, he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and Rock of my salvation'”,they stand silent, unable to make the Bible their biography.

As long as you think the Bible is speaking of someone other than yourself, you will never understand it. The entire book, from beginning to end, is all about you, individually. You are the one who will find David. It is you he will call “My Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.” David will literally stand before you as a young man just coming into adolescence. It is the same David who cried out in the Old Testament: “You will not leave me in the pit, in the miry bog.” And you do not. You awaken and, after three days you find him in the temple and scripture is fulfilled.

I tell you: you are an immortal being whose autobiography is recorded in scripture. Having inspired the prophets of the Old Testament, you came into the world to fulfill their words in the New. As the universally diffused individuality, Christ is housed in every child born of woman, bringing him into the world by meditating him into being.

Take the story of my friend seriously. Think of your thoughts as magnetic seeds, invisible and miniature, and the world as bearing witness to their arrangement. And remember: all you need do is rearrange your power-filled thoughts, and you will produce a corresponding rearrangement in your outer world.

Now let us go into the silence.

I REMEMBER WHEN

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 4-10-1968

When I receive a great revelation concerning the creative power of God I cannot keep it to myself, but must share it with all that will listen. Here is one I received many years ago. I found myself, in Spirit, in the interior of a stately mansion in New York City. It was the kind of home the great financial giants lived in at the turn of the century.

Fully awake and aware, I was visible to the three generations who were present. The son spoke to his children saying: ‘Your grandfather would stand on an empty lot and say: I remember when this was an empty lot.’ Then he would paint a word picture of his desire for that lot so vividly that those who heard him could see it completed right before their eyes. This is the grandfather who made the fortune we are now enjoying.”

I awoke, recorded the experience, returned to sleep, and re-dreamed the dream – only this time I was the grandfather. Speaking to those present I said: ‘I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then I pictured the building placed there so vividly the very stones molded themselves into the form I envisioned.

This principle can be used in a destructive or constructive way. You can say: “I remember when this was a glorious building and look at it now” as you become aware of rubble where once a glorious building stood. Or you can stand on rubble and say: “I remember when this was all rubble,” as you imagine a glorious building. You can say: “I remember when my friend had nothing and now he has much,” or: “I remember when he had much and now he is so poor.” You can say: “I remember when she was healthy,” which could imply she is now ill, or “I remember when they were unknown,” implying they are now famous. So you see what power was in that revelation. It’s entirely up to you how you use your imagination, but the operation of your creative power is completely up to you. You make the decision, and are therefore responsible for its effect on the world.

In the 12th chapter of the Book of Numbers, we are told: ‘If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision and I will speak with him in a dream.” A scriptural prophet is not one who tells your fortune, but one who hears the Word of God and fulfills it. If you asked me if I were a prophet I would answer in the affirmative. I am not one who prophesies by looking into a crystal ball, teacup leaves, cards, or astrology, but one who has fulfilled scripture. I know I am the central figure of scripture called ‘the Father.” I came into the world to fulfill scripture and share my revelations, my experiences concerning the power to create.

In this simple way God revealed his power to create, his power to remember when! Having nothing, you can become aware of being surrounded by wealth, and feeling wealthy you can say: ‘I remember when I had nothing.” Does that statement not imply that the state of poverty no longer exists for you? I remember when I was unknown. I remember when I couldn’t sell a book. I remember when I couldn’t sell anything I wrote. I remember when. Now you fill in the events, the desires and the fulfillments. I remember when. Do not those words imply memory?

In the first vision I heard of memory, but in the second vision I experienced it. As I stood on a vacant lot I remembered, and as I did a fabulous structure took form. And the dream was doubled, affirming that it was fixed, that the law was established by the Lord as told us in the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis. I tell it to you now in the hope that you will put yourself in an I-remember-when mood and trust your memory, because memory is your own wonderful human imagination, the one and only creative power of God scripture calls Jesus Christ.

When people say Jesus Christ is coming again do not believe them, for Jesus Christ has never left you. Did he not say: ‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age?” Then how can you look for him to return? Scripture states that Christ was taken up into the kingdom of heaven (which is within) and that he will come in the same manner as he was taken up. If Christ (God’s creative power) is in you, he cannot come from without. Although he seems to be invisible, Christ has never left you, as you cannot detach yourself from imagination.

Yes, Christ will come, but not in the way you were taught. Listen to these words from the 8th chapter of John carefully: ‘If you remain in my word you are my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Questioning this statement, the people said: ‘We are sons of Abraham and have never been in bondage to anyone.” To this Christ replied: ‘He who commits sin is a slave to sin.” You were taught to believe that sinning is when you do something wrong, but I say you are sinning when you miss your mark in life by failing to move! If, tonight you find yourself in a state you no longer desire to express, you must learn how to move into your desired state. If you do not move (mentally) you continue to live your undesirable state, thereby sinning and missing your mark in life! Regardless of what you may desire, persist in feeling its fulfillment, for if you do, feeling will become believing.

As sons of Abraham, the people claimed to have never known bondage, yet Jesus told them: ‘If the Son sets you free you are free indeed.” This is true, for only when you recognize God’s Son, David, as your son are you really free. When David stands before you doubt flees, and as you feel this wonderful relationship, belief sets you free.

In the beginning of creation the Spirit of God (his creative power called Christ) moved upon the face of the deep. Now, motion cannot be detected save by change in position relative to another object. Unless there is a fixed reference from which an object moves, no movement will appear. Let us use a weak, sick man as our fixed reference and looking into our mind see a strong, healthy man, and say: ‘I remember when he was weak and sick, but look at him now!” Do that and you have moved relative to the man.

Look at yourself in the mirror and dare to see radiant health and happiness reflected back to you. Then say within yourself: ‘I remember when my reflection was so different.” Persist in seeing your new image reflected there and you will resurrect that state. Your image, your concept of yourself or of another, is in your own wonderful human imagination who is Christ and Christ is the only God. God the Father and Christ your creative power are the same being, therefore he has never left you!

Tonight, regardless of whether your dreams are beautiful or horrible, you are aware of them because Christ has never left you. And when you awake in the morning Christ (your imagination) awakes with you, or you could not remember your dreams. The human imagination is the God the world honors (as they should) for imagination is the creative power of the world. Learn to control your wonderful imagination and you will discover that the whole vast world is yourself pushed out.

Last night I visited many of my friends, not only those who are here but those such, as my brother, who have gone through that little gate the world calls death. You see, to me this world is no more real than the world I visited last night. My friends, although gone from this sphere, are having the same experiences they had while they were here: hating, liking, loving, disliking. They are the same people, only young, with the same problems they had here. This I know, for being fully aware that I have already died, I can close my eyes to this world and enter that world instantly. I spent my entire night in a world, which is not real to this one, yet so solid and real to those who inhabit it.

Now, in the 14th chapter of the Book of John the central character of scripture said to those who were beginning to fulfill scripture: ‘You heard me say to you, I go away and I will come to you.’ If you loved me you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” This statement appears to be conflicting, but it is not. In the audience tonight are three to whom I made this statement and they rejoiced, fulfilling scripture. Now I say to all: unless I go away I cannot come to you. If you love me you will rejoice in the depth of your soul, for you will know that, although I will be invisible I will never leave you. Becoming invisible, Christ became you, therefore, he cannot return. I have told you I am the Father. That the Father dwells in me and I dwell in you and you dwell in me, so when you find me you find yourself as the Father. This is the unity of our being and there is no other.

Take what I have told you this night to heart and put it to the extreme test in this world of Caesar. There is no limit to your creative power. Simply stand on your new belief and say to yourself: I remember when. See what you want to see in your mind’s eye in place of what you see on the outside.

May I urge you to always use your power in a loving way, for it can be used unlovingly with the same results. It is possible to take a business that belongs to another and tear it down. This is done many times unwittingly, but the effect is the same. A few years ago while in Barbados I asked my brother about the business and he replied quite innocently: ‘It is doing remarkably well. The man who owns two-thirds of it is a good manager, but his hours are long and I think he is getting tired.” Six months ago the man asked my brother to buy him out, stating that the hours were too long and the responsibility too great. My brother set that whole thing in motion, and because the man wanted out, my brother got the business at his price. Victor has done this many times before, but not from revelation unless my father told him. One day the two of them were standing on fifty acres of undeveloped land, which opened to the beach, when my father said: ‘You know Vic, this would be a good place to build homes and hotels.” The property was then owned by three sisters who were not interested in selling, but one day when they were ready to sell, the man who had really wanted the property was in Brazil so my father bought it.

The thought expressed by my father seemed to be an idle one, but it wasn’t, for thought only takes a moment of intensity to be made alive. A kettle of water placed on a low flame is slow to boil, but when the flame is increased the boil is assured. I was so intense in my vision of being the grandfather, that I built a word picture so clear that those who heard it saw the building as something objective to them. The key is this: While in a state you no longer desire to express, you must move inwardly by claiming: ‘I remember when I was in a state I did not like.” If you can remember it you are no longer in it. Instead you are becoming aware of your new state as a present objective fact. And if you will remain faithful to your new awareness, it will crystallize. You will find yourself moving across a series of events which will lead you to the fulfillment of your desired state. How it will come about I do not know. I only know it will unfold.

Start now to remember when your friend wasn’t well by imagining he is healthy. Remember when your daughter was single by imagining she is married. Go through life remembering when. Haven’t you heard people say: ‘Who does he think he is? I remember when he had nothing and was a nobody!” Now, you may have heard a little jealousy in their tone and that is good because envy adds fire to the statement, which causes the one spoken of to have more! He may never know who caused his success, but it was done by an act of remembrance with intensity.

My vision – although experienced many years ago – was doubled, thereby affirmed and made a principle for all to prove, so I ask you to try it. Compare what you want with what you have. If they differ you must make the effort to move. You must learn the secret of motion. Many years ago my friend Bob discovered this. In his vision he questioned me, saying: ‘How long have I been here?” and when I replied: ‘Two years” he asked: ‘Did I learn anything?” to which I answered: ‘Yes, you learned how to move.”

You must have a frame of reference by which you can detect movement. Memory is such a frame. Perhaps your friends remember you as poor and unknown. You can move by assuming you have changed so much that they no longer recognize you, and from that frame of reference you can observe the expression on their faces. Those who love you will empathize. Those who do not will show envy. If you see envy don’t try to change it, for their envy will become a resisting force which will help you move forward. Everything needs resistance in order to move. I couldn’t leave this platform without it.

You couldn’t drive your car without resistance, so if you discover one who desires to play the part of envy, let him play it. Dare to assume you are the one you really want to be. Use your same circle of friends, but this time see them from a different angle. Observe their faces and listen to their whispers as they look at the new you and remember when!

This is what I was shown when God spoke to me through the medium of vision and made himself known to me in a dream. If we know that God speaks to us in a dream or vision, is there anything more important in this world? Is there any TV program, movie, radio, or newspaper greater than a revelation which comes from the depths of the soul giving an eternal principle of creation? There is nothing in this world equal to it. I urge you this night to seek the kingdom of God and all these things will be yours!

Do not let anyone tell you that Jesus is coming again, for he has never left you. In you as your own wonderful human imagination, Christ is crucified in all and will eventually awaken in all as he gathers us together into himself, into his one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

Now, some of you are having physical and emotional problems. As I told a friend tonight, no one ever promised you that it was going to be easy to bring forth the greatest gift in the world, so don’t expect it. There will be problems, horrible problems; but be of good cheer, for we are told in the 16th chapter of John: ‘When a woman is in travail she suffers, but when the child is born she forgets everything because of the joy that the child is born.” You are destined to know such joy, for the child to be born in you is Christ Jesus, the creative power of God.

I am not promising you complete relief from all physical problems, but I have given you a law which will cushion the blows of life. Things are going to happen and you will find all kinds of challenges, but you now have a law which states: ‘Whatsoever you desire believe you have received it and you will.” That’s a law, which will never fail you and there is no limit to your power of belief. It’s entirely up to you as to how and when these revealed laws of God are used, but I do know that you are going to conceive and bring forth the greatest thing in this world which is the birth of God, the birth of joy, as Blake said in his poem, ‘The Mental Traveler”:

‘I traveled thro’ a Land of Men
A Land of Men and Women too
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold Earth wanderers never knew

For there the Babe is born in joy
That was begotten in dire woe
Just as we Reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow.’

Here Blake is telling us what he saw in his mental journey, ending on this lovely note: ‘All is done as I have told.” And he meant exactly that. Everyone will experience scripture just as it was foretold: the resurrection, your birth from within, finding your Son David, your ascent into heaven, and the descent of the dove. This is your destiny, yours to experience when your memory is restored.

But don’t forget what I have told you this night. It came to me from the depths of my soul, which is God the Father. It is he who speaks to you from within, and when he appears you will know him for you will be just like him. And as he rises in you all impossibilities will dissolve as you will realize that everything is coming into your world from within.

Listen to these words carefully and you will see that the Father never left you: ‘I came out from the Father.” And where is the Father? In heaven. And where is heaven? Within! So I came out from within. The words ‘within” and ‘above” as well as ‘without” and ‘below” are the same in scripture. Coming out from within I see a world and ‘others” who have power over me. Now I want to leave the world and go to the Father. How is that done? By returning within, and since there is only one within where can I go that I can come again to be seen coming from without?

When you return to the source, the cause of all life, you will know that you and I are one. You will know it because there is only one Father and one Son. And when my Son calls you Father, memory will be yours and you will know the truth of what I say now, that I am in my Father and my Father is in me and I am in you and you are in me, for we are One.

Now let us go into the silence.

IF ANY TWO AGREE

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 3-22-1971

Concerning the Law, I can only acquaint you with the Law and leave you to your choice and its risk; but we have Scripture for it — to tell it, regardless of what they do with the Law. In the 18th chapter of the Book of Matthew you read these words: “If any two of you agree on earth about any request that you must make, that request will be granted by my Heavenly Father.” [Matthew 18:19]

Find two who agree, and that request will be granted. Well, can you conceive of something greater? If two agree on earth concerning any request — it doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t have to be this, that or the other, but any request — “that you must make, that request will be granted by my Heavenly Father.”

Here we are told the greatest secret in the world concerning the human imagination. We are told that: “With God, all things are possible.” Then we are told: “All things are possible to him who believes”; so he equates God with the human imagination: that God is the human imagination, and all things are possible to the human imagination.

Now, a friend of mine called me today, and I tell you the story that you may see. It’s entirely up to you. I’m quite sure that she was perfectly innocent in the wonderful work that she did. She has exercised this talent of hers which she has learned, as you have, from this platform; and she has done a remarkable job in the world of Caesar in dollars and cents. But one has to learn something outside of this and govern everything by Love. Everything must be governed by Love. Everything must be governed by Love. She was quite concerned, and really quite disturbed. She said, “Neville, what have I done? Have I done something that is wrong? A neighbor of mine — a male neighbor — asked me if I would play back his record for him.”

Now let me explain to you what she means by this. She has a very keen ear. If you speak to her — make a sentence, and then you stop, she can hear you as distinctly as anyone could ever hear you. If you put it on a record, what she is hearing is just as accurate as that recorded record.

So, she wants you to make a statement in a positive manner, like the great Professor* who said: “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.” This he said long before he had a nickel, and he persuaded himself of the reality of what he was hearing.

So, she wants you to put it into a positive statement just like that — “but tell me what you want.” Well, the neighbor wanted to be free of a disturbing element in the neighborhood, which was also a neighbor — a couple with three children. So she heard him distinctly say that he was free of this disturbance, that they were gone. Her ability to hear distinctly is so keen and wonderful that she heard him affirm what he had affirmed. In a matter of days the parents were killed on the highway, leaving three children: two little ones and a demented boy in his early teens. So she wondered, What did I do?
________________

Robert Millikan

I tried to persuade her, “You did nothing that was wrong. You simply exercised a principle. The lad who asked of you, — did you ask him anything concerning his motive behind it all?” Well, she didn’t ask that.

But I say, whatever you do, do it in love. She is completely exonerated as far as I am concerned. She simply applied the principle. So I tell you, I acquaint you with a principle and leave you to your choice and its risk. She is fantastic in hearing what she wants to hear in the world of Caesar; but may I tell you? You can go beyond that and take it into the world of Promise. If someone can say to you, “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit,” and your ear is so sensitive that you can hear exactly what the other one says — there are two witnesses now. “If two agree on earth about any request that they might make, that request will be granted by my Heavenly Father.”

Well now, that’s a request. It doesn’t limit it there. Could I say to you, I have had the experience? I have had the experience of which he speaks, the experience of the resurrection and the birth from above, the experience of the discovery of the Fatherhood of God, the experience of the ascent into the heavenly sphere; and can you hear with me that? Because what I said before was as much a lie based upon this level as the other; and so I am telling you now of another level. Can you find agreement on this level where I will tell you, as I have told you on this level, that my neighbors are gone, and now I am free of that disturbance, and you heard it with me; you heard my voice? You listen to my voice. And then, having heard my voice distinctly, you now — in my absence — you hear my voice actually state what you heard it state physically. And here are two agreeing: you heard the voice, and now you have heard this.

Now, can you go into another level and have someone who really sincerely desires to have this spiritual experience of the Promise as that lad wanted to be free of a disturbing neighbor?

So, the parents are dead; they’ve been killed in some freeway accident. Now you may say, Did she do it? No, she didn’t do it. She had only heard, — may I tell you? we are one body. There’s only one spirit, only one lord, only one God and Father of all.

“All things, by a law divine.

In one another’s being mingle.”

[Shelley, from “Love’s Philosophy”]

We are only one! So, if these two parents are now gone from the world, leaving behind little children — two little tots in their swing, — they are totally unaware that their parents are gone; and the other one, the early teens — he’s a little bit demented, and he’s not quite aware of what has happened.

So, I say to you, I am telling you of a principle — a Law that cannot fail. You don’t have to do anything on the outside, and you don’t even need another one. You can say to yourself, and then listen; the two could be within yourself. It need not be someone as sensitive as she is to the human voice. She has been trained that way. She was in the telephone business for quite a while as the head of her department on long-distance calls, and she knew voice after voice after voice.

And she could actually register that voice. So, she knew these voices. Before you could even announce who you are, she knew who you were because she knew the voice. She has been so trained to hear sound; and so, you come to her. She asks you simply, “State it in a bold, positive mariner what you have,” — which is really what you hope to have. “I hope to have it,” — don’t state it as a hope. State it as a fact, because we are living in an imaginal world. This world is one’s own imagination “pushed out.” The whole vast world is all imagination; that all these so-called objective realities were simply first imagined, and then they become what you and I call “realities.”

So, “All things are possible to him who believes”; and “With God all things are possible.” Therefore, the human imagination is equated with God! God and the human imagination are one.

Now tonight she is faced with this. I tried to persuade her today that she didn’t do a thing that was wrong. You are telling a principle; you are exercising a law, but not until man is incorporated into the Body of Love will he actually be able to exercise this Power where he can stop time and then start time. Because, what horrors he would do in the world!

Their two parents are gone? All right, so they are gone. They go all the time anyway. But here, a little man who wanted freedom from the disturbance of what he called a disturbing neighbor — three little children playing all the time, and it disturbed him; so he didn’t’ want that. She didn’t ask reasons beyond; she simply got his request, which was perfectly all right, perfectly normal, because she is a delightful, lovely lady — a lady who would not, for one moment, hurt anyone; but her whole interest has been on the world of Caesar: getting security, dollars and cents. The Promise does not interest her. As far as I am concerned, it has not interested her. I can’t see any interest in the Promise when I talk to her; but I can see a great interest in the Law, and she has discovered the Law, and she works it beautifully.

There is another friend* of mine back in the east, and the Promise means nothing to her, but the Law does, and she has made millions — but millions. When you own buildings on 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth you are “in the money.” When you have businesses all over the world, you are in big business, and that’s her business; and she started with not one penny in this world when she first heard me, but she believed what I told her. She believed that imagining creates reality, as I am telling you now it does. It does create reality.

So here, treat it, may I tell you? — and I plead with you — treat it lovingly. If someone asks of you this night to hear good news for them, certainly hear it; but try to find out something behind the reason why they are asking it of you, that you may do it in a _________________

Louise Berlay – Author of ‘ The Magic Of The Mind ‘

loving way. That whole family could have been removed without the destruction of the parents. It could have been removed in a thousand little ways, but it was removed in that manner.

So, I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is the only cause of the phenomena of life. There is no other power! That is the God spoken of in Scripture! That is the only God — your own wonderful human imagination.

Do you know what you want tonight? All right. Don’t minimize it. It doesn’t matter how big it is, state it; and then listen in your own wonderful manner to your own voice for that matter. Or, tell a friend without his knowledge; you can hear a friend of yours tell you that he heard the good news about you. You know what you want. You actually write it out in your mind’s eye, and then have a friend whose voice you know well — and listen to his voice as he is confirming that you have it. These are the two who agree. You don’t need another’s voice in the sense that you let him come into your world, as she did, and have him first state what he wants.

The Professor didn’t do that. He did it all within himself. He said, “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.” He didn’t ask another to state that; he did it unto himself, and he became the two. So, I don’t need any other to do it. If I have a desire to help you, or to help anyone, all I need do is simply to imagine that I have heard them; then I actually hear them tell me what I wish they would tell me. Then there are two: this one that I am hearing and I, the one who is listening and hearing; and these two agree. If two agree in testimony, then it is conclusive; and because imagining creates reality, it must externalize itself in my world.

“The whole vast world is only the imaginal act “pushed out.”

And so, we are told: “With God, all things are possible,” and “All things are possible to him who believes.” Well, am I not equating God with the believing one? And the believing one, isn’t that one’s own human imagination? That’s all that it is.

Well, you put it to the test, and you can go to any extreme in this world. There is no limit set upon this Principle–but none whatsoever. I can’t find one limit in Scripture, whether it be a violent thing or a lovely, pleasant thing, there is no limit. “I kill, I make alive; I wound, I heal; I do all things, and none can deliver out of my hand.” as I am told in the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy. “There is none that can deliver out of my hand.” And I do everything; “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal.”

So, you be the judge. I am telling you from my own personal experience that only when you are incorporated into the Body of Love will you exercise the Power that can stop arid release time. If you could stop time without love, what a horror you could create in this world! But you will not for one moment exercise that Power until you are first incorporated into the Body of Love.

So, I say to this lady — she’s not here tonight; a friend of hers is here tonight who will see her, — she did not do one thing that was wrong. She simply accepted a person’s request, and she heard it distinctly; and in a matter of days they are gone — rubbed out, leaving behind three little children.

Now, I tell you, if we were not one, it would be entirely different; but it was only done to herself, because:

“All things, by a law divine,
In one another’s being mingle.”

We are all one. And the day will come that everyone will know it. That’s what I’ve been trying night after night to convince everyone who is here: that you, one day, will discover that you are actually, literally God the Father!

The central theme of the Christian faith is the Fatherhood of God. That’s the central theme. And one day you will discover from your own experience that you are God the Father; and there is no power in the world that can persuade you that you are until a son — and because He is Father, there must be a son, and it is His Son who stands before you and calls you “Father.”

Here in Scripture you are told: “If the son sets you free, you are free indeed.” And people wonder: What on earth is that all about? “If the son sets you free, you are free indeed.”

A demented king stands and he looks at the head of the “enemy of Israel,” and he wonders, Who is the father of the man who brought that head here? The king’s name is Saul, and he’s insane; and he asks his lieutenant, “Abner, whose son is that youth?”

And Abner said, “As your soul Liveth, 0 King, I cannot tell.”

He said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.”

No one knows; so the stripling — the young lad — comes holding the head of the giant in his hand; and the king said to him, “Whose son are you, young man?”

And he said, “I am the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite,” — because the king had sworn to set the father — not the son — to set the father of the man who destroyed the enemy of Israel free. And he destroyed the enemy of Israel. He would not put on the garment of the king. He took it off. He only carried five stones with him. They weren’t five stones. It’s all beautiful imagery. “Five” is simply “grace.” The number “five” is grace; and grace is God’s gift of Himself to man. So, he took only the grace of God, the gift of God. “Grace” is equated with the power of God. “For my grace is sufficient unto thee, and my power is made perfect in weakness.”

So, you are the little weak one. You go forward, and you have my grace — you have my power, – not five little stones as told in the story. Here is God’s gift of Himself to man; so he stands before him, and the king does not understand who is standing before him. He is suffering from amnesia. The “king” is everyone in this world. He didn’t recognize his own son.

Paul’s first name was Saul, and Saul was converted into Paul. When he was Saul, he went out to destroy the entire story as he heard it; and then he heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

And then he answered, “Who are you. Lord?”

“I am he whom thou persecutest. I am the Lord.” And then he changed his name from Saul to Paul. The whole vast world is Saul. He looks into the face of his own son and he cannot recognize him because he is actually suffering from amnesia. Then comes a complete return of memory, and he remembers he has promised to set the father free of the man who destroys the enemy of Israel. And so, memory returns, and he is the Father, and he is set free!

“No one can set me free but the Son that I have forgotten.” So, my Son returns, and all of a sudden I am set free! This is the story of Scripture. The day will come, you will actually see Him. He will be the one who is standing before you. You will recognize Him. You will know Him to be your son: and knowing your Scripture that He is the son — the only son of God — and that he’s your son, then you know Who-You-Are. You are God Himself, limited for a little while in a garment of flesh and blood to tell the story to encourage others who are still in the demented state of Saul.

Now, to go back to the story, if she could hear that which was not true and then it becomes true, why limit it to the world of Caesar? — of getting rid of a neighbor? Why limit it to the dollars and cents of making a fortune? Why not take it into the Promise, and have someone within your own Self say, “I have experienced the Promise, — I have actually experienced the Resurrection, and the birth from above, and the discovery of David, and the ascent of myself into heaven, and the descent of the dove,” and then listen as though you actually heard it?

If you can’t do it that way, then take a friend, and hear the friend say to you, “I heard that you,” — and then let that friend’s voice be the voice that you are hearing, arid you are reveling in what the friend is saying concerning what you have experienced; and have the two agree. “If two agree in testimony, then it is conclusive.”

So, do not limit it to the world of Caesar.

So, when she called today at 10:00 this morning, my heart went out to her because she was quite disturbed — frightfully disturbed — with the thought, What have I done? For really, she would not kill — well, a butterfly. That’s the kind of a lady that she is. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. She wanted money; she has money. She really wanted that beyond all things, but she has it now. She got it, and for the rest of her earthly days that’s done. It is all in trust, and she has it. I would ask her to go outside of that now. If she could only become hungry for It, as she was hungry for money.

But do not dwell upon what has happened concerning the death of these two people. Forget it. They have gone from this little world, but they are still in a world just like this; and as far as the little children are concerned, they will be taken care of. They will grow into this wonderful world of ours, and everything will be perfect.

But I am telling you, your own wonderful human imagination is creating all the realities of your world. All the objective things in the world are but the outpouring of our imaginal acts. That’s what Yeats meant when he said:

“I will never be certain that it was not
some woman treading in the wine-press who
started the subtle change in men’s minds,
or that it was not some little shepherd boy
lighting up his eyes for one moment before
this little power ran upon its way.”

He was dreaming of being a hero, and he simply — in his own strange way — dreamt of violence, because today it seems that man feels only if he were a hero in a military sense that he really is a hero. He must be this, that or the other in some fantastic manner. But he does it, and then he is influencing the entire world, because we are all one.

“All things, by a law divine,
In one another’s being mingle.”

We are all actually one. So, if I stand here now and lose myself in an imaginal act, I am influencing the entire world — influencing every one who can be used to aid me in the objectification what am imagining. So, do it lovingly.

Whatever you do, do lovingly, — I don’t care what it is. And if you are ever in doubt, do the loving thing, which is called by the simple, simple term the “Golden Rule’.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

So, if you are ever in doubt, use that as your rule, and you can’t go wrong; and then the day will come that you and I will meet “on high.” Then you will be able to understand Scripture. Here’s the one who said, “I am from above, and you are from below. I am not of this world; you are of this world.” Do you think one man is talking to men? No; it is one Being speaking to Himself.

Here is the “outer man” called Neville who came into the world first. This is the “Esau” of Scripture. And then after that, comes another one, — my own wonderful human imagination; and that’s the “Jacob.” This is the “twin” that comes into the world. They aren’t two separate little boys. This is the story; this is an adumbration of that which comes later into the New Testament; that the one who could say, “I am from above and you are from below; you are of this world; I am not of this world.” So the Being that is speaking is your own wonderful human imagination that in Scripture is called “Jesus Christ.” And the “thing below” is the body that you are “wearing,” and that is “of this world.”

Now, you are anchored here. I will show you how I need not be anchored here, because these two, as we are told in Scripture:

“In thy limbs lie nations twain,
rival races from their birth;
one the mastery shall gain,
the younger o’er the older reign.”

That’s from the 25th chapter of the Book of Genesis [Genesis 25:23, Moffatt’s translation].

Now we are told in the first book of Corinthians, the 15th chapter, that the “Second Man” is the Lord from Heaven, So, the second one who is mentioned in Genesis as Jacob, who became Israel as he wrestled successfully with the Lord, — his name was changed from Jacob to Israel; he is that “Second Man.” He came second; Esau came first. Well, this [indicating the body] is the “Esau”; and it’s limited to its senses.

It can only accept as true what the senses dictate —- what reason allows. But there is something outside — far beyond this, which is the “Second Man,” and he is the Lord from Heaven. He is called in Scripture the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I stand here. I only accept as real what my senses now dictate — the room; but I don’t want to be here. Is there something in me that could dominate this little man that insists that this is the only reality? Well, certainly! It’s my own wonderful human imagination!

Can I, while standing here, assume that I am elsewhere and see the world from that elsewhere-ness, and “see” it as I am now seeing this from this platform? I can do it. Well, if I do it, what would happen? I’ll go there. Man, not knowing that, he is tied to his little body “Esau” morning, noon and night. He never gets away from it. But these rivals within man — the second one eventually will become superior.

They are rival races from their birth; yet that younger one is destined to be the master; and the younger, which is the second, is the Lord from Heaven. And he will actually dominate when he comes awake within this wonderful story that is Scripture. And that second one is your own wonderful human imagination.

So, I will stand here, and reason denies it, my senses deny it; my pocketbook will not allow it, and my time will not allow it, but I want to go elsewhere. Everything in this world tells me I can’t go. Well, where would I go? I know exactly where I would go. Well now, let me in my imagination go. I don’t travel; I bring “there” here, and “here” vanishes. I take “there” and make it “here”; and I take “then” and make it “now” And with my eyes closed to this world, I simply envelop myself in my wish fulfilled, and see the world as I would see it if it were physically true. And when it seems to take on all the tones of reality and all the sensory vividness of reality, then I open my eyes; and this world returns. That’s what we are told in the Book of Genesis. Esau came back from the hunt, and as he came back Jacob vanished; but his father Isaac said, “Even though he deceived me into believing he was you, I cannot take away my blessing. I gave him my blessing. I gave him your birthright. I cannot take it back. I gave him the right of birth to come into this world and be as real as you seemingly are. So, now you must vanish, and he must take it even though he deceived me.”

It was a self-deception. I deceived myself into believing that I am what one moment before reason denied and my senses denied. Try it! And if it proves itself in performance, does it really matter what the world thinks?

You see, we are dealing with the most fantastic mystery in the world, — the mystery of imagining. That’s what Fawcett said:

“The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems, to the solution of which every man should aspire, for supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far-off solution of this mystery,” [from “The Zermatt Dialogues”] — because you are actually solving the problem of God. If you can solve the problem of imagining, you are solving the problem of God!

So, even though you make a mistake and people are injured, like tonight two are dead; no regrets. They are awake in a world just like this to continue their journey, and the three will be taken care of. So, I do not stand in judgment, and no one should stand in judgment of what she did. She exercised a Law that she heard. She heard it from me. I only ask you: when you hear it, mix it with love. Never do unto another what you would not want them to do unto you — never do it. So ask, why do you want the neighbors to go? All right, they will go in their own wonderful way. They may want to go without violence. They will want to go and you hear it in that way.

So, make them rearrange their words to fit a pattern of love. Then you hear that, too; and it will all come to pass.

IMAGINATION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 7-14-1969

Tonight’s subject is Imagination. You read in the 17th chapter of the book of Acts, a story of Paul coming through to the Athenians, and he calls upon these men, for he saw the inscription over and over. He said: “As I passed by…I saw [an altar with] this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ This therefore that you worship as unknown, [this] I proclaim unto you.”

“He is not far from each of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:23, 27, 28)

The great Blake said it differently. This is what Blake said: “All that you behold; though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow.” (“Jerusalem”)

Then he said: “Babel mocks…” We are all familiar with what Babel represents: the confusion of tongues, no two believing in the same god. Not yet speaking different languages but speaking one tongue, they have different concepts of the creative power of the universe. And so he said:

Babel mocks saying, there is no God, nor Son of God That thou O Human Imagination, O Divine Body art all A delusion, but I know thee O Lord…

He equates God and his son with the human Imagination. To him and to the speaker, Divine Imagination is identical with the word “Jesus.” So, when I think of Jesus I do not see a being outside of my own wonderful human Imagination. Are we not told in Scripture: “With God all things are possible”? (Matthew 19:26 and Mark 10:27) We are also told in Scripture: “All things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23) That is Scripture, now. The power of believing is God himself.

So, God in man is man’s own wonderful human Imagination. It’s difficult for man to make the adjustment, having been trained to turn on the outside to some god that he worships. We go to church and the mind turns outward to some god, and he paints a word picture of someone before whom we must bend our knee and cross ourselves. But that’s not what Scripture really teaches. Scripture teaches that the power that creates the entire universe is not without man, but within man, as man’s own wonderful human Imagination. That is the creative power of the world. All things exist in the human Imagination, so if the word “God” would turn you out, try to make the adjustment within yourself and begin to believe that the God of Christendom, the Lord Jesus of Christendom, is your own Imagination.

If all things are possible to God, and God is your Imagination, then it should be possible for you.

Now, I ask the question. I think I have told it simply enough how you can test it, how you can enter into a state. I think I have told it to the satisfaction of most people that we are the operant power. To hear it, to recite it, commit it to memory, is not enough. We have to apply it, for we are the operant power.

A few days before I closed in Los Angeles, I retired quite early, maybe 9:30 or 10:00 o’clock and I communed with myself. To whom would I turn? “So,” I said to myself, “I have said everything that I have heard from within myself, everything that I have experienced concerning the Law, I have told. I have told what I have experienced concerning the Promise. Could I tell them something more about the Law that would make it a little bit more simple? What can I say that I haven’t said?”

So, I asked the depth of my own being to show me, to show me exactly what I could say that I haven’t said. Well, in the wee hours of the morning, a little after 4:00 o’clock, as I was coming through from the depths of my own being, here is the experience: I am on a spacecraft headed for the moon. Now, it is all in one’s Imagination, for the dreamer is one’s Imagination. That is the cause of all. Now, first of all, let me say that everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. So, the moon has within itself the capacity for some symbolic significance. I am headed for the moon.

Now, you have heard the expression time and time again: “Oh, he is reaching for the moon.” It could be an ambition based upon your social desire. You want to transcend the limitation of your world where you were born. Or it could be some financial ambition, and friends who know your limitations will say of you: “He is reaching for the moon.” Or it could be some tyrant trying to conquer the earth. We have had a Hitler, a Stalin, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon. All these were reaching to conquer the earth, reaching for the moon. Now we are actually on the verge of stepping on the moon, and so we will hit this object in space.

But forget that part of it. I am asking for light so that I can throw some light upon the Law, how to realize my objective in this world in a more simple way than I have so far succeeded in telling it, and this is the vision: I am on this craft and I am headed for the moon. There are others on the craft with me. Instead of landing on the moon, I went into the moon through a very, very large tunnel – a tunnel wider than the depth of this room. The object is dead, dead as dead can be.

I say to someone on the craft: “May I get off?” and he said: “Certainly.” I stepped off onto this dead body in space, the moon. There were little objects for sale, objects made on earth and placed on the moon to sell to tourists. They were cheap, cheap beyond measure, made of clay: little cups, little saucers, little plates, little ornaments but the cheapest of cheap! You can’t conceive anything cheaper in appearance and in quality.

There they were, made on earth to sell on the moon, just like some sideshow at a carnival. I picked them up, examined them, and thought: “Here, a quarter of a million miles away, man made these things, put them on the moon to sell to tourists.” What was the significance of the vision? All of man’s ambitions are like clay. They will all turn to dust.

A man died here the other day in Texas. He started out as a poor boy and left an estate of five hundred million dollars, but he left the estate. He had reached the nice, ripe age of seventy-five, but he left every penny behind him. And those who now have billions, they will leave every penny behind them, just as though it is made of dust.

Nevertheless, I asked the question of myself and the depth of my own being answered: so what is the significance of the dream? Tell man, not that he shouldn’t have what he wants, certainly he should have it; it is going to be dropped anyway, but he can get it. So, what other point was driven home to me?

This is the point: instead of landing on the moon, I went into the moon.

Blake makes the statement, “If the spectator could enter into the images in his Imagination, approach them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could make a friend and companion of any one of these images in his Imagination” well, he emphasized “enter into the image,” not to contemplate it as something on the outside. I contemplate now New York City. I am seeing it from San Francisco. If my desire this night is to be in New York City, I say I can’t afford the time, or maybe I can’t afford it because of lack of funds, or maybe my commitments will tie me here ?I don’t know, yet my desire is to be in New York City.

I must, if I would realize it in spite of the limitations that now surround me (money, lack of time, obligations, call it what you will, I still want to be in New York City. I must enter into the image that is now something on the surface of the mind ‘out there,’ 3,000 miles away. Standing here, I must shut out the belief that I am in San Francisco.

Knowing New York City quite well, I would assume I am standing in a most familiar part of New York City and let it surround me. I must be in it, and then think of San Francisco. I must now see it 3,000 miles to the west of me, as I now see New York City 3,000 miles to the east of me. If I go into that state and dwell in it and make it natural, though I remain in it only for a little while, a minute or so, then I open my eyes, ‘I am shocked’ to find that I am still here. I came back here. I have done it. I have entered into the state of my desire and I will move across a bridge of incidents, a series of events that will lead me and compel me to take a journey to New York City.

Now, this I have used only as a spatial example. You can take it in a financial sense, take it in the social world; take it in any way whatsoever. That is what came to me a few days before I closed. For if I could find something more simple to tell them than I think I have told them, this would be it:

To enter into the state and not simply think of the state.

Thinking from it differs from thinking of it. I must learn to think from it.

A man who this night came into a million dollars, from that moment that man is made aware that he has a million, when prior to that he had nothing. He is thinking from the consciousness of having a million dollars. He is not thinking of it; he is walking in the consciousness of having a million dollars. He’s not hoping for it, wishing for it; he is actually in it. That is what the vision revealed to me.

Even though at the end of my journey I will leave my things behind me and they will all be as though they were made of clay – all cheaply made, at that, every man, not knowing this ?in fact, how many know it or care to know it? They still want to realize their earthly dreams, and I am all for it; I teach it. But I cannot change the Promise. The Promise is fixed. That is something that will come to every being in this world, for it has been predetermined. But when we are here in this world of Caesar, I can cushion the blows, the inevitable blows, by learning the technique of Law and how to apply it, how to use it.

Now, the thing I quoted earlier, Blake said in this quote from “Jerusalem”: “Although I behold Thee not…” Well, here it’s perfectly true; I do not observe imagining as I do objects. Imagining is the reality that we name this power called God. So I don’t observe imagining; I observe objects, but I don’t observe the power in them. That’s the greatest secret in the world.

The secret of imagining is the secret of God. Anyone who finds it finds supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight. Every one should aspire after this secret and try to unravel it, for whatever you find about your own wonderful human Imagination, you are finding about God for your Imagination and God are one and the same. There is no other God. You imagined yourself into this world, and you’ll imagine yourself out of it.

You came into the world for a purpose, and when the purpose is fulfilled you will detach yourself from it and return to the being that you were prior to your descent into this world. “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.” (Blake)

Now, I am not saying it is the easiest thing in the world for you to accept this. It will come to those who have never heard it before as blasphemy. It will come as a shock, an awful shock, when man who is trained to believe in an external God to whom he bows, to whom he prays then to discover that He is not on the outside at all.

As we are told in Scripture: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you,” and God is spirit. (I Corinthians 3:16) Well, if God is spirit, and his spirit dwells in you, you can’t divide it into different kinds of spirit. God is spirit and his spirit dwells in me. Now, if his spirit dwells in me, I try to find out what that spirit is in me that I can call by another name that is more intimate. Well, I have found it and the spirit of God, which is God himself in me, is my Imagination. And if all things are possible to God and if I can but believe that they are possible to me, well then it’s entirely up to me to find out how to believe it.

I imagine, as do you. We cannot imagine differently. All difference lies in content.

So, [my] response to the eternal question: “Who am I?” will determine the circumstances of my life. Who am I? Am I the little one that was born on a tiny little unknown island with no social, intellectual, financial background? Must I accept the limitations of birth? Well most people do. But have I read Scripture? Did I read the words that I am the temple of the living God, and the spirit of that God dwells in me and all things are possible to that God? Well, I should not allow anything to interfere with my discovery of that spirit in me that is called the “Spirit of God,” for if all things are possible to him and he dwells in me, I must make every effort to locate him.

Well, I have located him, and he is my Imagination and I do not differ from any person born of woman. The Imagination in every one is God. But if they have been trained to believe [in] their little beings and my own tiny little Imagination, people will say: “Oh, that’s just his imagination.”

We are going to the moon. A man imagined it a hundred years ago, Jules Verne. He even imagined the nation that would do it. He said the Yankee know-how, their engineers will contrive the means to get there first. He wrote that 100 years ago, and no matter how others try, we will get there first. We are on the verge of it, but he had to imagine it first.

What is now true was once only imagined. We are in a room. It seems so real. Well, this was once only imagined. You are wearing dresses, you are wearing all kinds of things, but they had to be imagined first. You go to a tailor or your dressmaker and you pick out the material that you like. It’s just a plain piece of cloth. Then you tell your dressmaker or I tell my tailor what kind of a suit I want. So I allow him with his know-how, to take my vision of the kind of a suit that I want. Having picked out the material, he executes it. Now what is then proven when I put it on was first only imagined?

A man imagines a desire, say for wealth. When he becomes wealthy he may forget the means by which it came about and think all the external forces that were used to bring it to pass are the causes. They had to play the part that they played because he imagined what he imagined.

So, I don’t differ in the act of imagining from you or any being in the world. The only difference will have to lie in the content of my imagining. What am I imaging? If I imagine something little and feel sorry for myself ?all right, life will prove that I had every reason in the world to feel sorry for myself, because the blows will come to me. And I will turn to the one who gave the blows and blame him or blame them, when the blame (if any) is in myself; for had I not imagined what I have imagined, I could not encounter the conditions that I encountered. This is the Law of Scripture.

We are told: Don’t fool yourselves. “Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” God is your imagination; he’s not mocked. “As a man sows, so shall he reap.” (Galatians 6:7) Well, what am I sowing? I am sowing everything that I am imagining. That is what I am sowing, for the only thing I can ‘sow’ is what I imagine. So, will I now change from an external god to the internal God and find him in myself as my own wonderful human Imagination?

Let Babel rant and say there is no God. Let Babel say there is no Son of God. Then comes that wonderful statement of the prophet, who sees that: “You, O Human Imagination, Divine Body called my Human Imagination, the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, buried in me.”

And were he not buried in me I couldn’t even breathe, I couldn’t think. But one day he will rise in me and as he rises in me, I am. I am he now, but do not know it. When he rises in me I know it then because I rise, not “he” rises. He has become me to the point that we aren’t two; we are one.

So, he suffers us.

I say: “I am in pain.” Well, his name is “I Am.” That is my Imagination.

I don’t say: “My body is weeping,” I say: “I am weeping.”

I don’t say: “My body is tired,” I say: “I am tired.”

So, is not Blake right when he says: “Thou sufferest with me”? Though I do not behold…I can’t quite see you as something external. I could not in eternity see myself as something external. I must see it only by reflection and the world undevoutly reflects what I am doing within myself. The day will come I will actually see myself, but not as something external to myself. I will know myself only by reason of the son who stands before me and calls me, “Father.”

Then I am looking right into the face of the Son of God, and he will call me “Father.” Then, and only then, will I know who I Am.

Everyone will have that experience. One day you will actually see the Son of God, and this relationship is something so deep and so profound there is no uncertainty whatsoever in you when you are confronted. He stands before you, and you see him and you know he is your son and he knows you are his father and there is no uncertainty whatsoever. Only then do you know who you are, that you are God the Father.

Everyone, one day, will have that experience, everyone. I am speaking from experience. I am not theorizing. I am not speculating, but until that day comes let us discover God within ourselves as our own wonderful human Imagination and then test it. “For all things are possible to God; and all things are possible to him that believes.” (Mark 9:23)

Well, I can believe but have I made all things come to pass? It can only be my lack of belief if that statement is true. So how then to believe when reason denies it, when my senses deny it?

So reason cannot be the God of whom I speak, for reason will deny it. Doubt cannot be the God of whom I speak for doubt is called in Scripture the devil, ‘the demon’ and he finds rest only in the human Imagination, the Imagination that will entertain him that’s where he went.

If I will have no room in my Imagination for doubt then I am on the road to learning the art of believing. How to believe when reason denies it, when my senses deny it? Well, entering into the image is the most delightful thing in the world. You can try it tonight when we go into the silence. Try it in the simplest little way: putting yourself elsewhere by making ‘elsewhere’ here, making “there” here and “then” now. And you can do it. It’s not difficult if you’ll try it.

Let me repeat: we are the operant power. Knowing it is one thing and doing it is another and the minute you try it, you can do it.

Well then, wait. The minute you do it and open your eyes, in the twinkle of an eye you’re back here and you will say to yourself, “I didn’t do anything; I just did a simple little thing in my Imagination. How on earth could that produce the result when I’ve just assumed that I’ve done it?” Well, wait and see if a little bridge of incidents does not quickly appear, compelling you to walk across that bridge of incidents towards the fulfillment of what you have done. It works that way and after you have proven it, the whole world can rise in opposition and it makes no difference to you, you’ve done it. After you’ve done it, you keep on doing it and become all the more rooted in who God really is and you’ll walk with your head up, walk as you ought to walk as one in whom God dwells.

There’s no place in the world more holy than where you are. For wherever you are God is there. There’s no church built with human hands comparable to the temple of God and “ye are the Temple of the Living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” (I Corinthians 3:16) What temple in this world made with human hands could compare to this temple when no hand could make it? It comes into the world and it’s a temple of the Living God.

But again, if this is the first time you’ve heard a thought of this nature, if it’s the first time you’ve been exposed to it, I am not telling you it is not a shock and it’s not difficult to accept. It isn’t difficult to grasp, but difficult to accept after the training most of us here have had. I know I had it. I was raised in a very wonderful Christian orthodox home, where Sunday school was in order not once a week, but twice a week, grace at the table, Mother reading Scripture to us and interpreting Scripture based upon her concept, which was a secular concept.

To her the Bible was secular history, things that actually happened in her world. She didn’t realize that she, as the whole vast world was mistaking personification for persons and the vehicle that conveys the instruction for the instruction itself and the gross perspective for the ultimate sense intended. But Mother was raised that way and she made her exit from this world in that belief.

So, when I was exposed to this at the age of twenty or twenty-two, I must confess I couldn’t sleep. It was so completely different that it turned me inside out. I wondered if I’d done the wrong thing to visit this friend. I wondered what on earth have I done? I felt I was a sinful being even to entertain the thought. I had to wrestle with myself and finally, when I put it to the test and it proved itself in performance then I knew that I’d found him.

But you can’t find him and not share it with others, as told in Scripture: So Philip found him and he goes and he shares it with Nathaniel. Andrew found him and he goes and shares it with his brother, Peter. Peter didn’t find him; his brother found him and then shared it. (See John 1:40-46) So here, we find and we share it. I have found him. All I can do is share him, in the hope that you will accept him.

I know this much: if you believe to the point of acceptance, life will be marvelous for you, perfectly wonderful for this is the one secret in the world that everyone should aspire to solve, for God is that pure imaging in ourselves. He underlies all of our faculties including our perception, but he streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fantasy. I sit here and have a daydream. Well, that’s God in action, but then someone breaks it and I forget it. I didn’t occupy it; I simply had a daydream but without occupancy. That’s one of the greatest fallacies of the world, ‘perpetual construction’. It’s a daydream, deferred occupancy. I don’t occupy it, I don’t go in and possess it and make it mine. If I, in my Imagination, could go right in and possess it and make it mine…If I, in my Imagination, could go right in and possess it and clothe myself with the feeling of the wish fulfilled, actually clothe myself with it by assuming that it’s done now, until I feel natural in that assumption and that assumption though at the moment denied by my senses, if persisted in will harden into fact. [a statement made by Anthony Eden at the Guild Hall when he was Prime Minister of England]. So, this is our great secret concerning imagining.

If you doubt it tonight, I would only ask you not to deny it to the point of not trying it, but hold it in abeyance and try it now. Just try it, even if you want to disprove it. I tell you, you will not disprove it. You will in the attempt to disprove it, prove it. And then slowly you will come to completely accept it and then you will walk in the company of God.

You won’t have to wait for Sunday morning to meet him in a church or any time of day. No matter where you are, you could be standing in a bar enjoying a drink, having fun at a dance and you are in the company of God. It makes no difference where you are once you know God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination and you’ll become extremely discriminating because you’ll know you can’t entertain these ideas with complete acceptance of them and not reap them in your world.

And who wants to reap the tears forever? So, you become ever more discriminating. Don’t think for one second that you’ll live a loose life. No. You’ll become a far more wonderful person in the world. You hear a piece of gossip, it doesn’t interest you.

Today in the morning paper, many people turned right away to the gossip columnist and wondered who is living with whom and they love it. They don’t know the people and they will go right out and repeat what this person is paid to print, because it is like almost peeking through the keyhole of someone else’s door.

He can’t maintain that job. He’s paid to be a gossip hound and people read it. Others read only the obituaries to see who’s dead. You will not read those pages. You will simply suddenly dwell upon the noble things. Not only for yourself will you do it, your circle will widen. You will. You will think of a friend and if he is distressed, you represent him to yourself as you would like him to be. If he’s unemployed, you represent him to yourself as gainfully employed. If he is earning less than what it really takes to live well in this world with his obligations, you represent him to yourself as living well and earning a decent living and assuming full responsibility of his job and you push him in your mind’s eye.

So you widen your circle. It’s sort of self perpetuating; you take in all because, eventually, “all that you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within, In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow.” (Blake, “Jerusalem”)

So, you can’t exclude anyone. If you exclude one, it’s your own failure. But you don’t sit down and work with that one to make it so. You simply assume that it is so. You plant it as lightly as you would if you sowed a field. You don’t go out and trample it, you sow the field and it comes up.

Well, this is what I mean by ‘Imagination.’ I identify my own wonderful human Imagination, when I say ‘ I,’ I am speaking of all for everyone imagines, so I identify our Imagination with God. That to me is the Lord Jesus. He is buried in us and one day he will rise in us, not as something external to ourselves but he will rise in us as us, after we’ve gone through the furnaces of experience in this world of Caesar.

Now there’s no room for a final death with Christ in man, for Christ resurrects. You say good-bye to a friend who has gone through the gate we call ‘death,’ but he cannot die. Nothing dies in this world for God is the God of the living. But nothing dies, because the immortal you cannot die and the immortal you is far more real than the garment of flesh and blood that it wears in the world of Caesar.

This is the limit of contraction for a purpose, but when this is burned in the furnace (cremated) you, the occupant, are not burned in the furnace. You are restored, clothed as you are now only the body is young, not a baby, a young body about twenty.

I encounter them all the time and they are young, though when I said good-bye through the gate of ‘death,’ they were seventy or eighty, my father, eighty-five when he said good-bye, my mother, sixty-one. I met them in their twenties. I am much, much older. I am. I meet them, and they grow. They grow there too; they don’t remain twenty. You grow there and you are just as afraid as you are here; and you marry there too and strive there too and die there too, to find yourself restored once more.

And the journey continues until you resurrect. Resurrection is a departure from this age into that age called “the Kingdom of Heaven,” but only when he in you resurrects as you, will you leave this world of Caesar. But while you are in it, why not learn his law because the blows are inevitable. Learn the law, that you may cushion the blows.

So, when I know what I want to cushion the problems of the moment, then I will apply it and apply this principle towards anything in my world. And the principle is this: First, you start with desire. Who is desiring? Well, I Am. Well, who is “I Am”? That’s God. “That is my name forever and forever,” as we are told in the book of Exodus. “Go tell them I Am has sent you. This is my name for all generations, forever and forever.” (Exodus 3:15) Therefore, who is feeling? I Am. Well, that’s God! Who is desiring? I Am. Well, that’s God and “all things are possible to him.” (Mark 9:23).

All right, start right there.

Could I continue desiring if I had it? No I couldn’t. If I wanted this room to lecture in when I came here and then I got confirmation from the management that I am allowed to speak in the Marines’ Memorial for ten days and the dates are set, could I write him a second letter pleading with him? Could I in any way hope after I had realized it? No, I simply walk in the assumption that I have it. So, when I requested that I have this room for 10 talks, it was granted and from then on I had no more desire for it. The desire was realized.

I had to wait the normal time, the interval of a month, well it was a month ago that I accepted it. Then I came a month later to fulfill it. Well, the same thing is true in all that you do in this world. You simply dare to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled until it seems natural, until it takes on the tones of reality and when it does, it’s done.

And now, trust God. Well, who is God? Your own wonderful human Imagination! Did you imagine it? Well, that’s God! Now trust him. Don’t turn to any outside power.

The church has just demoted something like a hundred saints, after making fortunes selling little pictures of them. I wonder how many still wear St. Nicholas? They treated him as a saint. It’s like treating Santa Claus as a saint. And all these saints – the saint of the road, to protect you against an accident, now they say he never lived. If he never lived why did they ever start it and yet, hundreds of years ago they started this nonsense, so unnumbered millions of these little icons, little medals. Down south our Cardinal admitted that tens of thousands of these little medals, he had put his seal of approval, the Seal of the Cardinal, on the reverse side of that little medal. When they asked him: “Well, now do you regret it?” he said: “No, it was acceptable then and I did it in good faith.” But whoever started that nonsense started it for a commercial reason and they made unnumbered millions, hundreds of millions in selling them to the many. And what number of millions of people wore them and are still wearing them – and he never existed! They mount them on the front of their car, on their little trucks, on their bikes and now to discover at this late date…

I’ve gone out with these friends of mine to greet three fellows who came back from the war. One was a marine; he lost one foot and the arm was completely smashed, one arm. His brother was going into the priesthood and he came back deaf; he was in the army. Another was in the army; he came back with TB. And their mother told me in all innocence and they went along with the mother. “Were it not for St. Christopher they would not have returned.” She really believed it, and they believe it and one was three years going for the priesthood when the war broke and he thought it better to serve his country than to become a priest. Then when he came out he gave up completely and got married and has a nice little family. But he believed it and they believed it and the father and the mother believed it.

They entertained me very well, but they knew that I was not safe because I was a Protestant. “Christian” meant nothing to them because you either are a Roman Catholic or you are not a Christian. So, I said to my wife, “What will they think when they find out that I am not a Roman Catholic?” She said, “It doesn’t really matter. They love me dearly and I am not one. They know you can’t be saved anyway, so what?” So, we all go and have fun. My wife was very, very honest about it for the simple reason her father was that family’s closest friend.

And these came back, one with a foot missing, a crushed shoulder. Well, I was in the army too, not as long as these fellows were, but I didn’t come back fragmented. I used this principle to get out of the army and I got out honorably discharged. I didn’t run away. The very one who said “No” to my request was the very Colonel who called me nine days after I began to apply this principle. I did it quite simply. I made up my mind that I wanted to get out of the army and then I thought, if I were out, where would I be? Well, I wouldn’t be here picking up pots and doing all these things in the army and being trained. I would be a civilian in New York City in my own apartment with my little girl and my wife.

My son was a Marine and he was already in Guadalcanal. He volunteered with my consent for he wasn’t more than seventeen when I gave my permission for him to join the Marines.

But having tasted the army life, I wanted no part of it. I was thirty-eight. So, I simply assumed I was a civilian living in New York City with my wife and my little girl, who was only a few months old and the same Colonel who had disapproved my application called me in and said: “Goddard, you still want to get out of the army?” I said: “Yes, sir.” And he asked a thousand questions and to each I said: “Yes, sir.” Then he said, “All right, bring me in a new application,” and that day I was honorably discharged and on a train headed for the fulfillment of my dream.

I simply knew what I wanted; I didn’t ask any one’s permission. I went to sleep in the barracks with all the boys all around. I didn’t tell them what I was doing. As far as they were concerned I was sleeping on that cot. As far as I was concerned I was sleeping in New York City. I went to bed physically on a cot, but in my Imagination in my own bed in New York City. When I thought of Camp Polk, Louisiana it was way down south and I am up here in New York City. And, then the same man who disapproved was the one who actually granted me honorable discharge

. I am speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. I didn’t hurt any one. No one was hurt by my application of God’s Law. Are we not told: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will?” You will read that in the 11th chapter of the book of Mark: “Whatever you desire….” He didn’t say, if it’s good for you. He leaves us entirely to make our decision. He actually acquaints us with the law, and leaves us to our decision. So, I was left to my decision. I wanted to get out. The Colonel could tell me nothing to persuade me to change my opinion. If he had said, “No,” that was final, I couldn’t appeal to some higher echelon.

I could take it only to my commanding officer. Well, he was my commanding officer, and he disapproved it. Well, I came back, I had the paper in my hand, “Disapproved.” I went to bed, without his permission, and slept in New York City. I went to bed without anyone in the barracks knowing what I was doing. They saw a man called Neville Goddard sleeping in that bunk but they didn’t know I wasn’t there, for where could I be save in Imagination? If I am not sleeping here in Imagination, I am not here.

You see the garment that I am wearing, but you would have to find out where I am in Imagination to actually know where I am. You can see the garment, but is the garment the man? I was sleeping in Imagination which is God and “all things are possible to him.” Well then, “He” changed the Colonel’s decision. He changed his mind. Who is “He”? My Imagination.

God is one. There aren’t a million little gods running around. There is only one God. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” [Deuteronomy 6:4]

Don’t look for a second god; there aren’t any second gods. And that one God became humanity and in man that one God is man’s own wonderful human Imagination: that one God. So it’s the ‘one’ made up of ‘others’ and that is exactly what the word Elohim means. The word translated ‘God’ in Scripture is Elohim and Elohim is a compound unity. It’s a plural word, one made up of others. We are the ‘others’ and all collectively make the one Lord, which is called ‘I Am.’ Well, don’t you know that you are, and don’t you say: “I am”? That’s God. And can’t you imagine? Well, imaging is God in action.

So, what are you imaging? You determine that. For, as I said earlier, I imagine, as do you. We cannot imagine differently. All differences lie in content. What is my response to the eternal question, “Who am I?” That response determines the conditions of my life. Am I a little unknown being, struggling for a dollar to pay rent, to buy food? Well, all right, that’s what will happen to me. And there’s no being on the outside to change it! I’ve got to bring about the change within myself. I can borrow money and beg for money and if I remain in that little concept of myself, I will be unable to pay back and will always have to keep looking for someone else to borrow from while I remain in the consciousness of being a little unwanted non-entity.

Let me remain at that moment just what I am and change it now, begin to change my response to the question, “Who am I?” And if God dwells in me I ought to be important, not against some one else in the world. That doesn’t make any difference to me what they are. Grant them exactly what they want. If they want riches, let them. What does it matter? If they want to be in the social world at the very top, let them be. No envy whatsoever! If they want to be important in the eyes of the world, let them be important. You have different values. You are in union with God and God is within you and what better companion could you have in this world than to walk in the company of God, walk with him not only on Sunday morning, but every day of the week, knowing who he is?

So, we have to make the decision. “Choose this day whom you will serve.” [Joshua 24:15] Will I serve a false god or will I serve the one and only living God? And that one and only living God is your Imagination – my Imagination – and that is the immortal man that cannot die.

Now let us go into the silence.

Good!

When you completely accept this, you will discover you need no intermediary between yourself and God – none! He became you, that you may become God!

Now, are there any questions, please?

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: I would not say that every dream needs an interpretation. Most of them do, for the universal language, regardless of what tongue you use to express yourself…there is a universal language, and that is the language of symbolism. Unfortunately, we are all past masters at misinterpretation, but there is a language that is a universal language of symbolism. So, I say, everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance.

So, in my vision of the moon I asked for light concerning the law [how] I could tell those that I am trying to teach, a more simple way to realize their objective in this world. And then that night came the vision. It was a very simple presentation, for here the moon is something that man aspires to reach. Long before we entertained the thought seriously of reaching the moon, we used it as an expression, “He is reaching for the moon.” And you would say about someone who has no background to even aspire: Why he is crazy! Here is this man without any educational background, and he hopes one day to leave his imprint in the world concerning that which only an educated man can do. Well, they say, “He is reaching for the moon.” So, the moon is only a symbol of anyone’s desire.

[The same man continued his question.]

Neville: I find myself intuitive enough to interpret the dream of another. I asked down south (I haven’t the time here ?it would take more time than I am allotted here for two weeks) but down south they write me letters asking me to explain a dream, which they find difficult to interpret for themselves. And as they grow (and we outgrow in this world) they turn to me for the interpretation of a dream that seems to have no meaning. But every dream has meaning. As we are told in the 12th chapter of the book of Numbers: “God makes himself known unto man in a vision and speaks to him in a dream.” (v. 6) Well, if God is my Imagination, and all dreams proceed from my Imagination (that is, my dreams and your dreams) therefore, I must learn the language that it is using to convey to my surface mind this message. So, I cannot discount the simplest dream. It may be produced by some undigested piece of beef, but I don’t look upon a dream as the result of any undigested piece of beef. I look upon the dream as my own being – the depth of my being – attempting to reveal something to me in the language of dreams. When it comes to vision, that is something entirely different. This is vision. A vision is just like this, real beyond measure. Question: As regards symbolism, I came across a book that contradicted the whole idea. In other words, this mysticism . . . they say to deny yourself and all images, and leave yourself open and empty to God, and that this is the only way you can have a mystical union.

Neville: First of all, I would not accept that, and I would not say that any person’s individual approach is the only way. So, any man who writes a book (and may I tell you, ninety-nine per cent of the books written are a waste of paper) but because a thing is printed, the other person, because he sees it in print, thinks he must be a wise person. “Look, he has a book,” but it is sheer nonsense from beginning to end. [The man continued with his question]: It was not just one person; it was several who called themselves, “The Friends of God.” I don’t know whether you have Neville: Well, for instance, today we have enormous groups of people calling themselves by other names. We just had a huge, big one in New York City where the Yankee Stadium couldn’t hold the crowd, and Yankee Stadium can take care of 75,000-odd people in the stands alone. But they were allowed to come down on the grass. Well, if the stands can take care of 70-odd thousand and the field certainly [holds] many, many more ?they estimated they had about 300,000. They called themselves by a very wonderful name in Scripture, and ask any one of the 300,000 who were there to get up and testify from experience about their name. They called themselves “Witnesses.” Well, if you are a witness, witness to what? Have you witnessed the birth of God in you? Have you witnessed any of these great mysteries of Scripture?

One of these “Witnesses” came to my door about a year ago (in fact, four of them, but only one came up the stairs). I was busy at the time reading my Bible. I spend hours every day with the Bible. Well, this was about 4:30 or 5:00 o’clock in the afternoon. She came to the door with her Bible all marked up with little pieces of paper, and then, on the street (looking to see what reception she was going to get) there were about three or four down on the sidewalk. She came up and asked me if I would open the door to let her in to explain God’s Word to me. I said: “I am sorry, but you came without an appointment, and I am busy. In fact, I am reading his Word right now.” And then something led to something else, and I said: “I am sorry, I am busy, and I have no time to entertain you or to discuss anything with you.” Then she started quoting; she wouldn’t allow me to brush her off this way, so she started quoting some Scripture. She said, “Do you know what it means?” So, I told her my interpretation of the passage she quoted, and she said to me, “What are you? A Mormon, or something?” So, she was going to have her way, and that’s all you can do. So, I said: “I am awfully sorry, my lady, but I cannot give you any more of my time unless it is by appointment. You can’t come and ring my doorbell and expect admittance. You can’t do it. I have a family, and we live a very quiet and nice life, and we don’t have interruptions this way.” So, she went on down and they gabbed and pointed their finger up: “Mark that one off; he’s going to hell.” So, what can you do with people? I mean, leave them alone. You cannot take a man by his nose and put him into a state of consciousness if he resists it. We are told in Scripture, “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.” [Amos 8:11] Well, until that famine is sent upon you by the God within you, the word is not within you. You are more interested in making an extra dollar.

I can’t give one person all the questions. I’ve got to get to someone else.

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: Ultimately we turn to the One, but we are brothers, as spoken of in Scripture, these words, “He has set bounds to the people, according to the numbers of the sons of God.” So, we are brothers; it takes all to make the one. I will never in eternity lose my identity, neither will you, and yet we are one. You are the same God. Of the same son you are the father, as I am the father. That shows the unity of our being. If you are the father of my son and that one son I know to be my son, and everyone is going to be the father of that son, there is only one Father.

So, Scripture teaches, “There is only one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6) only one, yet no one is going to lose their identity. I am expanding my identity but there is no loss. When I am embraced by the risen Lord as he wore the “human form divine,” which is Love, I answered the question. He asked me to name the greatest thing in the world. When I said, “Love,” he embraced me and we fused and became one spirit, one body but I didn’t lose my identity. When we separated from that union, I came out as Neville, only within myself I was conscious of a greater self, fully aware of the greater self, without loss of identity. So, everyone here is destined to discover the fatherhood of God as himself through the Son calling him, “Father.” Everyone.

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: My dear, we have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have enormous pressures in the world to make the world good. We will never bring about an unbalance of good and evil. It is always borne on this tree. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it bears equal number of fruit. So, they have all the efforts in the world to make it a better world. They are up the wrong tree. We’ll get off this tree of good and evil one day and eat of the tree of life [when] that day comes which comes with the resurrection. And the resurrection is not a collective thing; it is an individual experience. We are called out of this state one by one by one, to unite into a single body, who is the risen Lord. So, everyone is favored.

Ten million dollars for this, a hundred million dollars for that and then just wait a little while, and then at the end of a year a little investigation: a committee is formed to find that those who got the hundred million to dispense it for good, they pocketed it themselves. All of a sudden: “Where is the twenty-seven million dollars in oil gone?” Why, twenty-seven million dollars in oil can’t be accounted for.

Somebody had it. They didn’t spill it in Santa Barbara. [Ed. note: reference to oil blowout in 1969.] That came out of the sea. So, where are the twenty-seven million? Only that week twenty-seven million dollars worth of oil for our boys in Vietnam and they can’t account for it. You see, you find this in every walk of life: good and evil. So don’t try to burn it out; you’ll not stop the tree from bearing good and evil. You go along your own way in all the lovely things in the world and grant the others to do what they want to do. They are going to do it anyway. When I speak, I want to help every one in this world, individually. I am not for the crowd, to make them all this so-called ‘good.’ “No one can come unto me, unless my Father call him.” (John 14:6) and “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30) Not one could be here tonight if my Father didn’t call him. Even those who may never come again were called. This is your first little blow, little explosion.

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: Why, certainly, you can help anyone in this world, and you will get to the point where you will help everyone. But you are not going to change the nature of the tree. This tree bears good and evil. This is the nature of this world. And all of a sudden you will come out of it and you will eat of the tree of life, and you will see this world so differently, you will be shocked beyond measure.

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: My dear, the world is dead and people don’t know it. Dead, dead as dead can be, even though they are walking it. The day will come that you will have this experience. You will know that what you are feeling within you, you could arrest; and as you look at the people round about you, you arrest their activity within you, and every one stands still. I don’t mean they are standing still like soldiers at attention when they can still blink their eyes and move the body; I mean they are dead! They can’t move an eye. They are not aware that they are standing still. And if you arrested that motion for 1,000 years, when you released it they would continue on their intention and not know for one moment that they were still for 1,000 years. This is all part of the structure of the universe.

All that is taking place in the world belongs to the eternal structure of the universe. You didn’t get created; you are part of the eternal structure. All marriages, all divorces, all love, wayward love, lovely friendships, hates it is all part of the eternal structure of the universe.

So, when we speak of creation, I don’t mean erecting a little man of clay. Man was always a part of the structure of the universe. I am not speaking of the creation of life. We are only animated bodies now. The day is coming that we will become life-giving spirits. Then you will see the whole vast world is a dead body, as dead as the moon and all the relationships are worked out in detail. If one could but see with the awakened eye as the child comes through the womb, the whole pattern of its life is there.

Q. [Inaudible]

Neville: Because it’s a dead body. It is now animated by the spirit of God, which is called breath, for the word “breath,” the word “wind,” [and] the word “spirit,” are one and the same, both in Greek and in Hebrew. So, it breathes the breath of life into man’s body. It is the spirit that possesses the body, that then becomes an animated body – a living being, but not a life-giving spirit. (That [one’s] the act of creation.)

[Question concerning assuming the wish fulfilled]…you cannot allow any conscious fears.

Neville: The question is: having assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you cannot deny that in spite of that assumption there are a few conscious doubts and fears. Well, I do not deny that, but practice will make it less and less so and you will trust God so implicitly, not as an external being who may be quite watching you when you are praying. That is what people say, “I wonder if he saw me?” because your Imagination will always…

As we started off the lecture tonight quoting from the 17th chapter of the book of Acts: “You have an unknown god…I will tell you of that unknown God and he is not far off. In him we live and move and have our being.” Where could I go, departing from my Imagination? I am all Imagination and that is God. So whatever I am imagining, my Imagination is seeing. Eventually you have such complete confidence in Him. Imagination and faith are the stuff out of which man fashions his world. Now, faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective, hope, and faith and Imagination are the stuff out of which we fashion our world.

Good night.

IMAGINATION FULFILLS ITS SELF

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-26-1968

I say imagination creates reality, and if this premise is true then imagination fulfills itself in what your life becomes. Although I have changed the words, what I am saying is not new. Scripture says it in this manner: “Whatsoever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” This statement goes back two thousand years, yet even before that Jeremiah tells of the same principle in his story of the potter and his clay.

But until imagination becomes a part of your normal, natural currency of thought, you will not act consciously. Like breathing, this awareness must become so much a part of you that you will not turn to the left or the right to praise or blame anyone. When you know this presence it will not matter if you started life behind the eight-ball, or in a palace; as a poor, or a rich child; you will realize that life is always externalizing what you are imagining.

Lacking the knowledge of this principle, you can reproduce your environment – be it pleasant or unpleasant – forever and ever, as you feed your imagination on what your senses dictate. But knowing this principle, you can ignore the present, and untethered by the so-called facts of life, you can imagine the present as you desire it to be and feed upon your desire, rather than its omission.

Now, imagination cannot be observed as we see objects in space, for imagination is their reality. Faucett gives the name, “God” to the cause of the universe, saying: “God, the creator, is like pure imagining in ourselves. He works in the depths of our soul underlying all of our faculties, including perception, and streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.”

Listen to your thoughts and you will hear God’s words! A thought that is not felt produces nothing. But a thought producing motor elements reproduces itself! Catch God in a moment of a motor element such as anger, fear, or frustration, being congratulated or congratulating, and you will know what is going to happen in your world. Unless, of course you arrest your thoughts and revise them. Most of us, however, are not aware of what we are doing, so we do not observe the creator. But we can catch him as he streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.

If, while riding the bus, driving the car, sitting at home, or standing at a bar, you hear a remark and react by moving on the inside, that remark will fulfill itself in what your life becomes. This principle sets you free, if you are willing to assume its responsibility.

But whether you assume it or not, you will fulfill your every motor element thought anyway. So in the end you will not sympathize or condemn, but simply tell those who may be going through an unpleasant experience of this principle, and – if they accept it – let the principle work in their lives.

Now, the average person in America is either Christian or Jew. Ask any one of them if they believe that imagining creates reality, and the chances are they will give you a negative response. But although they do not know it, if they believe in God they believe in imagination. They may read scripture and accept the words on the surface, but their meaning has not become a part of their thinking.

Last night, for instance, I heard Billy Graham for the first time. Here were thousands of people in the audience listening to a thousand-member choir sing the song, “Oh, how I love Jesus.” Now, I don’t want to be critical, but when I heard Billy Graham speak I realized that he had not the slightest concept of Jesus, far less his second coming. He said: “If Jesus should come now, just imagine, there would be no more cancer, no more heart failures, and no more death.”

Billy Graham believes heaven is made up of flesh and blood bodies in excrementitious states. And they would have to have bathrooms there, if there were no more death. If you were still in a body, that is excrementitious. You would have to take in food which is given you, and what you could not assimilate you would have to expel. And, unless you lost all sense of shame and reverted to the animal world, you would have to have a bathroom. I listened to this man and asked myself: is this the man who was entertained at the White House and received by the Pope at the Vatican? (On the other hand, the Pope is equally silly concerning the mystery of Christ.)

Then at the end of the program, there was an appeal for money. He will give you two books which you hadn’t asked for. One interprets the Bible and the other interprets the first one. All you need do is send in your donation to this simple address: Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minn. “But,” said he: “this program is costing us $500,000, and we don’t have that sort of money. So if you are alone please send in a contribution. But if you are not alone then take up a collection among all who are with you and send it in.” Now, this goes on night after night for one solid week! He is a grand and wonderful being, but he has no concept of the mystery of Christ.

Now, I want to show you what I mean when I say you can be exactly what you want to be. Let me begin by telling you that for the last couple of months I have felt like the devil, yet I knew I was responsible for the hell I found myself in. The doctor gave me every possible test, and when I saw him yesterday he told me I was a dilemma.

Do you know what a dilemma is? It’s an argument presenting two or more alternatives equally conclusive against an opponent. In other words, if you start on the assumption that whatever you choose your conclusion will be wrong, you have a dilemma. You can use anything as a dilemma. That’s me. My blood indicated one thing in a certain test and the opposite in another. The tests only confirmed what I already knew: that the cause of my discomfort lay in the depth of my soul and not in any secondary cause – such as a thyroid, heart, liver, kidney, or anything outside of myself.

I am wearing a body, but it is not me. I put myself into this body, which limits me. I am its operant power. It cannot be causeful, as it only reflects what I am entertaining in my imagination. I must not justify it, condemn, or excuse myself in any way. Knowing I did not feel well, I changed my feeling, and when the tests (which I had taken to please the one I love) came back, I learned I was a dilemma.

I ask you to take the same responsibility. To not pass the buck to any person, organization, situation, or circumstance, but to discover for yourself that imagining truly does create reality. If the cause of all life is God, then God must be all imagination. And because you can imagine, then – like God – you are pure imagination in yourself. Regardless of what reason and your senses deny, you can imagine anything and bring it to pass if this premise is true.

Now let me share a few wonderful letters I recently received. A lady writes: “In July my car needed repair. As I signed the credit slip agreeing to pay the cost of $62, I imagined it was a check, for I never sign a check unless there is money in the bank to cover it. August and September passed with no request for payment. In September a man stopped by and, eager to sell his house, asked me to list it for him. I told him that I was no longer in the business and recommended my former broker. I forgot all about it, but in October, just before the car repair statement arrived, I received a referral commission from my former broker in the amount of $68. – six dollars more than the cost of the repair of my car.

Here the money – like the story in the 6th chapter of Luke – came to her pressed down, shaken together, and running over. Everyone in the ancient world had a big pocket where grain was placed and pressed down until it ran over. Just like the baker’s dozen this lady received her $62 – plus.

Then she said: “For some time now my favorite chair has needed new upholstery. Choosing the material and pattern was easy, but the cost of $87 had to be imagined. So rather than limit myself to an exact figure, I simply imagined my chair as already newly upholstered. While sitting in it, I denied its worn cover, and when thinking of it while in another part of the house, I always saw it as I desired it to be.

In early September, while on vacation, our neighbor had a heart attack. His wife, desiring to be with her husband, asked if their son could stay with us until their return. Since he and our son were playmates and inseparable, John stayed with us for five beautiful weeks, and when his mother asked how much she owed me I kiddingly said, ‘Nothing! But, some day when you have an old, worn out hundred dollar bill tucked in your billfold and you don’t know what to do with it, you can give it to me.’ And the lady replied ‘That’s exactly what my husband and I agreed to do,’ and from her billfold she took a folded hundred dollar bill and gave it to me. That money paid for the chair’s new cover, plus an additional $13.” Again we see the money came to her pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

When you apply this principle towards the seeming other you are applying it towards yourself, because there is no other. We are told that when Job forgot himself in his love for his friends and prayed for them, his own captivity was lifted. Then all that he seemingly had lost was returned, multiplied one hundredfold.

As you forgive another by thinking of him as you would like him to be and persuading yourself of the reality of your imaginal act, you are forgiving him for what he appears to be by putting him into an entirely different state. Do that and you are substituting a noble concept for an ignoble one. That’s forgiveness! Forgiveness tests the individual’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. A priest will say: I forgive you, yet when he passes you on the street he remembers what was confessed. If he can remember, he has not forgiven! The memory of what was done or said must be replaced by something else, so that the former can no longer be remembered.

If the present Mrs. Onassis remains Mrs. Kennedy in your eyes you have not forgiven her, because you are still seeing her in the old state. Forgive her by so losing yourself in the idea of her new state that it is all you can remember, and not the former one. Keep thinking of her in the former state and you have pulled her back into it, for there are only states, externalized.

Now here is another story: My friend went to Pittsburgh this summer to visit a childhood friend, who expressed a desire for a new Baldwin organ. Now, owning an inexpensive organ, my friend told her that every time she sat down to play, to imagine seeing the word, “Baldwin” across the front of the organ and claim it is their top-of-the-line model and paid for. This she promised to do.

Now, the friend’s father had departed this world, and when she received a check for $4,500 from his estate, she spent it on necessary home repairs. But when another check in the amount of $3,500 arrived from the estate, she decided to buy her organ. Although the Baldwin top-of-the-line model was priced at $5,000, she was told that it would be going on sale for $4,000, plus they would give her a $1,000 trade-in allowance on her present organ – making the total cost to be $3,000. Contracting for the organ of her dreams, she agreed to pay the $3,000 and the organ was installed.

Although a torrential rain had caused the roof of their home to need replacement, the estimate of $1,700 was delayed; so when it arrived, my friend received a call from her friend asking why the roofer had waited to give his estimate until after the Baldwin had been purchased. Then my friend told her the story of my friend Ann, who lived in New York City.

Ann was a member of the world’s oldest profession, that of being a lady of the evening. She often came to my meetings, but this day we met on the corner of Broadway and 72nd Street, where she told me this story. One day, while walking by a hat shop, she fell in love with a beautiful hat in its window with a price tag indicating a cost of $17.50. Wanting it so much, she decided to apply this principle, so in her imagination she placed the hat on her head, and as she walked up Broadway she felt the hat on her head. She would not look in a store window and be disillusioned, and when she arrived home she imagined taking off the hat and placing it on the top shelf before looking in the mirror.

Ten days later a friend called and invited her to lunch. When she arrived, the friend handed her a hat box, saying: “I don’t know what possessed me, but I bought this hat and when I brought it home I realized I had made a mistake. I do not like it on me but I think it would look lovely on you, Ann.” Opening the box she reached in and brought out – not a hat, but the hat.

Then Ann said to me: “Why didn’t God give me the money to buy the hat, instead of giving it to me through a friend?” I asked her if she felt obligated to her friend, and when she shook her head, No, I asked how much she usually paid for a hat. When she told me $4 or $5, I asked if she had ever purchased a $17 hat before. Again the answer was No, and when she admitted to owing two weeks’ rent, I said: “If while admiring the hat you found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk, would you have bought the hat? I’ll answer for you, no you would not. You would have paid your rent and perhaps bought some groceries, but you would not have purchased the hat. Tell me Ann, how much money must God give you to get you to buy a $17 hat? If he gave you a thousand dollars you wouldn’t have bought it, for you are not in the habit of buying such expensive hats, so God knows best how to give you the hat you desired.”

After telling the story, my friend asked: “How much money must God give you to buy the organ? You have the organ because you imagined it. Now, apply the same principle towards the new roof, for imagination will not fail you. Here is a principle the lady used for her organ, but when a new roof was needed she forgot the source of the phenomena of life. Reason came in and told her all of the money from her father’s estate was gone. If you will let it, reason will take this divine gift from you and leave you poor, indeed. For you have the gift of possessing whatever you imagine, if you are faithful to that which you have assumed!

Now, a lady wrote, saying: “I dreamed I was in a large department store with a dear friend who agreed to watch my purse while I shopped. But when I returned, my friend was gone and my purse was sitting in a paper bag on the floor. Upon opening the purse I discovered that $30, and a small card which I carry designating that I am an ordained Unity minister, was missing. I awoke wondering why anyone would want that card.”

The card contained the central object of truth in her dream. She has paid the thirty pieces of silver – the price paid for truth – and now she has transcended any ordination in this world. As nice as Unity and all of these groups are, they are playing their parts on certain levels of consciousness. But this lady has gone beyond any man-made ism, be it Unity, Christian Science, or Science of Mind. All of these are man-made doctrines, not based on vision. She was shown that she had paid the price for Christ; and the little card which gave her title to a certain level of consciousness has been removed, for she has transcended the psychological level and entered the third level of the ark of life – the level of vision. She has found Christ because she has paid the price.

May I tell you: you have the power within to create anything! Let people be what they want to be, while you set goals for yourself. It doesn’t matter what has happened in your life or what the evidence of your senses tells you, the power of the universe is in you. That power is the Lord Christ Jesus, whose name is I AM. You will never know it however unless you test him, for only then will you realize that Jesus Christ is in you. I was taught Christ was on the outside somewhere in space. But I took the challenge and tested myself, to discover that I am creative. That I create from within and that my life is the fulfillment of my own imaginal acts. I haven’t always been wise in my choice, for imagination is always fulfilling its imaginal state and I have imagined unlovely things and reaped them by becoming the fulfillment of what I was imagining.

Then I became more alert and discovered I could catch Christ as he streamed into my mind least disguised in the form of a creative fancy. If my thoughts were motor driven and they were unpleasant, I knew what to expect unless I revised them. But whether they were pleasant or unpleasant, I knew I would fulfill them.

Envy no one. If a man has $500 million and a girl stands at the top of the social ladder it is because God, in them, had the desire and is fulfilling it. Blake was right when he titled his wonderful picture: “More! More! is the cry of the fool. Less than all is not enough.” Scripture tells us: “All thine are mine and mine are thine,” for all that God is, is yours, as you inherit God. He is your possession, so whatever God is, when you inherit him less than all is not enough. But the cry of “more” is the cry of the fool, for as long as he wants more he never has enough.

Mrs. Onassis draws from a trust fund of over $20 million. You would think that was enough, but you can adjust yourself to a way of life where it would not be. There are the demands of charities, plus – if you desire to be one of the ten best-dressed in the land, you must have a fortune to gratify that desire.

There is nothing wrong with it. I personally have no desire to be named among the externally well dressed. I hope I am internally well dressed. I hope my light is blinding. I hope my garment is so powerful one cannot stand in its presence unless qualified to be there. And if I modify my garment to suit the level upon which another stands, that he may see the being I represent, I do – but certainly not on the outside.

I tell you: imagining creates reality. Believe me, for it is true. Faucett was right when he said,” The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires, for supreme power, supreme wisdom and supreme delight lie in the far off solution of this mystery.

A friend of mine sent Mr. Faucett my book, and called his attention to the chapter called, “Revision”. He also sent a copy to one who was a physicist at one of our great universities. The physicist felt that since the statements recorded there were not scientifically provable, the book was not worthy of his library. While the old gentleman – who was a philosopher and teacher at Oxford University – wrote the sweetest letter, saying: “I do not know who Neville is, but having read the chapter on revision as you requested, I know that he could only have received it from the brothers. No one but the divine society could have dictated this chapter.” Here was a man filled with praise for a thought the scientist ridiculed because it was beyond his grasp.

I ask you to take me seriously. Imagination will fulfill itself, so do not limit yourself by anything that is now happening, no matter what it is. Knowing what you want, conceive a scene which would imply you have it. Persuade yourself of its truth and walk blindly on in that assumption. Believe it is real. Believe it is true and it will come to pass. Imagination will not fail you if you dare to assume and persist in your assumption, for imagination will fulfill itself in what your life becomes.

Now, you may know of someone who had an assumption but died before it was realized. May I tell you: death does not terminate life. The world does not cease to be at the moment in time when your senses cease to register it. Instead, you are restored to life to continue your journey, and your dreams – unrealized here – will be realized there. You can’t stop it, for imagining is forever creating reality.

When my brother, Lawrence, was making his exit from this world, I told my sister-in-law that there was marriage in the next world and she – in a very light vein – said: “I don’t want to go now, but do you think Lawrence will be waiting for me so we can get married again?” Well I answered in the same light vein, saying: “God is merciful.” I’ll let it be at that and you can give any interpretation you want to regarding what I have said. But just imagine two people who have spent their life fighting like cats and dogs – wanting to perpetuate it? No. God is merciful. He really is. Once you have experienced an unhappy state you would have to be a stupid idiot to repeat it. But after the resurrection there is no giving or taking in marriage, for you are above the organization of sex – away beyond it.

Now let us go into the silence.

IMAGINING CREATES

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 6-3-1968

The creator of the world works in the depth of your soul, underlying all of your faculties, including perception and streams into your surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy. Watch your thoughts, and you will catch Him in the act of creating, for He is your very Self. Every moment of time you are imagining what you are conscious of, and if you do not forget what you are imagining and it comes to pass, you have found the creative cause of your world.

Because God is pure imagination and the only creator, if you imagine a state and bring it to pass, you have found Him. Remember: God is your consciousness, your
I AM; so when you are imagining, God is doing it. If you imagine and forget what you imagine, you may not recognize your harvest when it appears. It may be good, bad, or indifferent, but if you forget how it came into being, you have not found God.

You do not have to be rich to be happy but you must be imaginative. You could have great wealth and be afraid of tomorrow’s needs, or have nothing and travel the world over, for all things exist in your own wonderful human imagination.

Let me tell you a story of a lady I know who traveled in her imagination. When this lady was about sixteen she lived in Northern California. She was devoted to her father, who lived high, wide and handsome. He supplied all of the family’s needs very well until the day he was killed. Then, overnight, the family discovered they had nothing! Her mother, feeling she could not stand being ridiculed, moved the family to San Francisco, where the girl – although possessing outstanding artistic talent – found employment as a waitress in order to help the family.

Taking the streetcar home from work that first Christmas Eve, she found the car filled with young boys and girls, singing and happy, and she could not restrain the tears. Lucky for her it was raining, so she extended her face to the heavens and let the rain mingle with her tears. As she tasted the salt of her tears she said to herself: “This is not a streetcar, but a ship and I am not tasting my tears, but the salt of the sea in the wind.”

While she physically held the rail of the streetcar, she mentally touched the rail of a ship moving into Samoa. Physically tasting the salt of her tears she imagined it was the salt of the sea. As the streetcar reached its destination, she was entering the bay of Samoa, feeling the moonlight shining on her body and hearing a voice say: “Isn’t it a heavenly night.”

Two weeks later this girl received a check for $3,000 from a law firm in Chicago. It seems that two years before, her aunt had left the United States, requesting that if she did not return, the money was to be given to her niece.

Within one month, the girl was on a ship sailing for Samoa. Coming into the bay, she saw a ship plowing through the water leaving lovely white foam in its path. As the moonlight touched the wake, its spray touched her face and a man standing near said: “Isn’t it a heavenly night.” At that moment her outer senses experienced what she had used her inner senses to make real!

Now, imagination – being spiritual sensation – is the creator of the world. With her five senses (sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch) she transformed a streetcar in San Francisco into a ship in the South Pacific, and within one month she physically fulfilled her imaginal act.

Many will say that was just coincidence, but it was not! It is reality, but how do I get you to believe me? But whether you believe me or not, I know from experience that God and you are one grand Imagination, and there is no other God! One day, Imagination in you will awaken and you – fully aware of who you really are – will know that all things are subject to you. That is your destiny.

The present moment is a formed imaginal act. Arrest it, and you can change it in yourself by following the advice given in the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah:
” ‘Arise! Go down to the potter’s house and I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house and there he was working at his wheel. The image in his hand was misshapen, but he reworked it into another image as it seemed good to the potter to do.”

The word translated “potter,” means imagination, and we are told that the Lord is not only our Father, but the potter, and we are the clay in his hands! (Isaiah 64)

Remember the day your boss criticized you, and you are molding an image of yourself based upon what he said. Being undesirable, that image is misshapen. Unable to discard yourself, go down to the potter’s house by taking the same scene and reshaping yourself by remembering the day your boss congratulated you on your accomplishments. Will this act change your world? Yes! I tell you: the God of the universe is shaping you morning, noon, and night, as you accept words, actions, and events from seeming others.

I urge you to shape your world from within and no longer from without. Describe yourself as you would like to be seen by others and believe your words. Walk in the assumption they are true and – because no power can thwart God – what He is imagining, you will experience.

You are not someone apart from God, for I AM cannot be divided. The Lord, our God, is one I AM, not two! If God’s I AM and your I AM is the same I AM, define what you would like to be. Then believe you are the Lord! Be like the lady who transformed a streetcar into a cruise. Lose yourself in your new state, while your world on the outside remains, momentarily, the same.

Now, your reasoning mind may say she did have an aunt who had the presence of mind to die and leave her $3,000 at that particular time. And being young she did not consider the future; but I tell you: this is how the law works. It never fails if you will go all out and believe that your human imagination is God.

Because God cannot die, he is a God of the living! So when the garment you now wear comes to its end, you – the being living in it – will continue to live. You will still be in a world just like this one until you awaken from the dream of life. Then you will move into an entirely different age, to realize the oneness of the being that you really are. Until then, believe what I am telling you, for it is true.

When you imagine for a seeming other you are blessed, for there is no other and you are giving your imaginal gift to yourself!

Hear your friend tell you his good news, see the joy on his face, feel the thrill of fulfillment, and let it take place in your world. And as it does, recognize your harvest. Realize you are responsible for its consummation.

The world is yourself pushed out. Ask yourself what you want and then give it to yourself! Do not question how it will come about; just go your way, knowing that the evidence of what you have done must appear, and it will.

Last year, while I was in Barbados, a friend received a call from his mother telling him that his brother had killed a man. As he replaced the phone, a vision appeared in which a woman said: “Find Neville and he will give you the rainbow in the sky.” My friend called me in Barbados, and when I heard his story I said: “It is done. God is infinite mercy, and there is nothing but forgiveness of sin.”

When the spirit of Christ is formed in you, you will forgive a person, no matter what he has done. Pharaoh would not let his people go because God had hardened his heart, so how can you condemn Pharaoh for something God did? Tonight my friend told me his mother had called to tell him his brother had been set free.

I will tell you now, that no one can reach the end of the journey without having killed someone. Everyone must play every part, so that when memory returns he may forgive all. The part of the thief, the murderer, the rapist and the one raped – every state will be experienced. Anything man can do is recorded in scripture, and to fulfill scripture man must do every thing.

Had I not played every part, I would not have been born from above. My friend, who loves his brother and could not understand how he could do such a thing, has murdered, as we all have. We must do everything the world condemns in order for the spirit of Christ – which is continual forgiveness of sin – to be formed within us. And when this happens to you, you will see no one to condemn. It is not that you are indifferent to war or murder, but you will see the world as a play with you – the author – playing all the parts.

Remember: you don’t have to abide by anything you dislike. It is but a vessel in your hand which is not properly shaped. Go down to the potter’s house and rework it into another vessel as it seems good for you, the potter, to do.

You can not only rework your concept of self into a new one, but you can rework another. If one is not well or does not earn enough to pay his expenses, the concept is misshapen. You don’t ask the vessel if you may rework it, rather you feel as though you have witnessed the change or heard the good news.

There must be action, for an idea alone produces nothing. You must act within yourself by entering the idea. When someone calls or makes a request of you, you must act upon it by producing a motor element within yourself. It may be the sound of their voice telling you it has already happened. Or you may feel the touch of his hand. Whatever you do, it must be something that takes the desire from being an idea and moves it into the creative state of fulfillment.

The very first creative act recorded in scripture is when the spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the waters. Here is motion. If you would like to be elsewhere, all you need to do is close your senses to the room you now occupy and sense the room where you would like to be. Open your eyes, and your senses will deny any change, for yours was a psychological motion. By closing your eyes the obvious here vanishes, and through the act of assumption, there becomes here. Seeing the world related to your new position, you breathe reality into the state and, having moved from where you are to where you want to be, you have created it.

I know this doesn’t make sense, but as Douglas said: “The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems, to the solution of which every mystic aspires, for supreme power, supreme wisdom, and supreme delight lie in the solution of this far-off mystery.”

How is this mystery unraveled? By claiming you are all imagination. Then wrapping yourself in space, and mentally seeing your world relative to your assumed position in space. Do that and you have moved.

President Hoover once said: “Human history, through its many forms of governments, its revolutions, its wars – in fact the rise and fall of nations – could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the minds of men.”

Here you see that the change of governments is the result of the change of ideas implanted in the mind. Can you now see how we are implanting the horrors of the world? Read the morning paper, watch television, or listen to the radio, and you will observe how their words frighten you in order to get your attention. See a headline that someone was murdered and you stop to read it. See another, saying things are fine, and you ignore it, as it would mean nothing. Read the scandal sheet, telling of some prominent person who has been unfaithful and you enjoy a bit of gossip. All of these are ideas implanted in the mind, which cause the rise and fall of nations.

I tell you: imagining creates reality! If you want to change your life you must become aware of the ideas you are planting in the mind of others! When you meet someone who is negative, put a lovely idea in its place. Then, whenever you think of him, imagine he is telling you something lovely. And, because you now walk in a world that is not disturbed by his negative state, when he finds himself no longer thinking negative thoughts, he will never know you were its source. You will know it and that is all that is important.

Become aware of the thoughts you are thinking and you will know a more pleasant life. It makes no difference what others do; plant loving, kind thoughts and you will be blessed in the doing.

Believe me: Here was a child of sixteen who transformed her tears into the salt spray of the sea, a streetcar into a ship, and San Francisco into Samoa. She is blessed, for when it came to pass, she never forgot her moment of despair when she imagined a state and it came to pass.

I ask you now to believe in the invisible God who became you. When you say “I am”, you think of the face you wear, but you are not it. You are so much greater than it could ever be.

One day, God’s son David will look into the eyes of the being you really are and call you father. He will not call you by the name of the mask you wear, for David is the express image of your invisibility. Recognizing you as his eternal father, David signifies that your journey into the world of death is at its end. And from that moment on you will share your experiences with anyone who will listen and save everyone you meet.

You will save one who is unemployed by mentally hearing him tell you he is now gainfully employed and making more money than ever before. Having heard his good news, you will subjectively appropriate your objective hope and never turn back by doubting the reality of what you have done. You will simply watch it come to pass. Then you will know that you have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Lord God, and the Father of all!

I have disclosed the one and only source of the phenomena of life. Everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen to you, comes from God, who is your own wonderful human imagination. I urge you to use it wisely.

Now a lady wrote me, saying she heard a voice cursing her, and – not understanding – she questioned self and heard the words: “Because I want you.”

In the Book of Galatians, Paul tells those who have arrived at the end of their journey, to reject all laws and institutions which would interfere with the direct communication with their individual God. (Galatians 5:1-14)

In the spirit world, all organized societies are personified. Rivers, mountains, cities – everything is human, for God is Man. Even the Los Angeles Woman’s Club building is personified in the spirit world. Representing a need of the ladies who own it, when seen in the spirit world, and trying to detach yourself from it, it will curse you, for it wants to feed on you.

So when you leave religious institutions, organizations, customs, and laws that would interfere with your individual direct communion with your God, they will curse you, for they will have lost you. Just leave them alone. I have seen them all and they are nothing more than shadows. Once I saw a monstrous witch in a cave teaching little children the black arts. When she saw me she screamed: “O Man of God, what have you to do with me?”

The Bible tells the same story. Those who teach the black arts and how to hurt people, those who would control your mind and make you dependent upon them, are only personifications of organizations who keep you from contacting the only God who is within you. Every orthodox religious group would enslave you for the rest of eternity if they could; but when you leave that belief, its personification will curse your leaving, but their curse means nothing. They cannot touch you when you completely reject any intermediary between yourself and God.

Now to come back to tonight’s theme: Imagining creates reality! Have you imagined something and it hasn’t come to pass? Then what are you imagining right now?

Are you imagining you are John Brown? You were not born knowing you were John Brown. You were born and others began to call you John. As time passed you began to assume you were John Brown and began to respond when you heard the name John.

When you imagined being secure did you forget the feeling? Are you imagining you are secure now? You may have no evidence that you are secure, but as you allow others to tell you how much you are loved and wanted, how successful and famous you are, you will begin to assume it, and imagination will have created its reality. Try it, for that reality you already are!

Now let us go into the silence.

INFINITE POWER

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 02-16-1968

Robert Browning tells us:

“Truth is within ourselves.

It takes no rise from outer things
No matter what you see.
There is an inmost center in us all
Where truth abides in fullness to know,
Rather than insist on opening up a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape
That is effecting everything
As a light that is supposed to be without.”

My word is truth. This truth is within you, waiting to be accepted in order to be experienced. Speaking to his father in the 17th chapter of John, Jesus said: “I have given them the words which thou gavest me. They have received them and know, in truth, that I came from thee; and they have believed thou didst send me.”

I will now tell you the truth! Power took me to stand in the presence of the Risen Lord. Wearing the Human Form Divine, He embraced me and incorporated me into his body of Infinite Love. Wearing his body of love, I stood before Almighty God who said: “Time to act.” Then I was sent back into this world to tell the story of God as the infinite power of the human imagination!

Nuclear power could destroy New York City. But the power of which I speak is far beyond that of nuclear energy. Suppose you entered an animated scene, such as Grand Central Station in New York City at the peak of the rush hour, or the stock market in the course of a hectic day. As you look at it, you arrest an activity within you and everything stands still as though frozen. No matter how long you hold it – be it a second, a minute, or an hour – when it is released the scene becomes animated once again, as everyone continues their intentions.

Now suppose, having arrested the activity within you, you change their intentions and – releasing the scene with the changed motivation – you discover that they move under compulsion to fulfill that which they now think they initiated. Do you realize that with this power you could cause them to commit suicide and think it was what they wanted? Like the lemmings, you could make them run towards the ocean, enter beyond their depth, and drown. That’s what you can do with this power; but it will not be yours until you are first incorporated into the body of Love!

This I know from experience, for I have arrested an activity which seemed to be independent of me, to discover that although their forms were, their life was not. Activating my word, their life was in me; for as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted me (his son) to have life in myself!

Now, no man comes to me save my Father calls him – but no one! Starting on the surface of my being, I teach the infinite power of the human imagination, not knowing to what extent it will be believed. Many are called to hear salvation’s story. Few are chosen to believe it. Many will tell me they believe, but I find it is only lip service. I am not here to judge anyone. I was sent, not to condemn or judge the world, but that the world may be saved through me. Man is saved through belief, and condemned through lack of belief in the nature of the son of God. That son, called Christ in the New Testament, is defined as God’s power and his wisdom.

When God gave himself to me, he sent his power into the world, expecting the talent given me to be wisely invested. When I tell others what has been revealed to me, regardless of what they may say, I have doubled the investment and will hear the words: “Well done my good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”

Now let me show you how the disciples are selected. This selection is always done in the depth of the soul, as in the case of this lady, who wrote, saying: “Last Friday night I went to bed filled with the message I had heard from you, to find myself in a far, far place, remote in time and space. I am seated on a chair in a large empty room, glass fronted with marble pillars. Suddenly a self-propelled carriage appears. Stopping in front of my window, I see the carriage door open, as a man who is the embodiment of power and authority steps out. He is tall, with gray curly hair, wearing an envelope cape, and carrying a small attaché case.

“Moving swiftly, he enters the room, walks over to me. and begins to speak of power. As I look at him I recognize you, Neville. Now personified as power, I realize that you are God and you are Neville! Showing no sign of recognition, you continue to talk of power; sheer unadulterated power. Then, as suddenly as you approached you turned and swiftly made your exit. As though by appointment the carriage appeared, you entered it and vanished from my sight.

“I awoke bewildered, wrote down the experience and returned to bed saying to myself, ‘I must tell this to Neville.’ Instantly I am asleep, redreaming the dream, when my friend Marge Broome appeared. And I am hit in the forehead by a 3-4 inch long, 3/4 inch thick polished topaz, embedded with gold. As we looked at it a man walked over and said: ‘That’s very valuable. You can break it into many pieces and get a lot of money for it.’ That commercial idea appealed to me, so I placed it in my purse and again headed toward your house to tell you of the dream.

“Suddenly I realized Marge was gone, as well as my car, purse, and topaz. Having no transportation, no money, or identification, I said to myself: ‘What do I . . .’ then I arrested the thought and said: ‘I will go within and imagine I am with Neville.’ Instantly I am in your apartment telling you the dream. As I reach the point of telling how I imagined myself there, the doorbell rang, and a group of gay, happy young boys and girls entered, causing so much confusion I awoke, saying to myself: ‘I will tell him on Monday.'” Last Monday she brought me the letter!

My work is not complete until my Father, in the depth of the soul, calls my twelve. Recognizing and applying the truth of my words, this lady was called to witness the embodiment of the Infinite Power. She saw him as the man she knows as Neville – yet she knew he was God. Many see me as a physical man. Few see my true identity, which has unfolded itself in the depth of the soul. But I am not unique. I know that every child born of woman will one day be called and embraced to become one with the body of God. Then, wearing the form of love, he too will be sent by God. After incorporation into the body of love, I was sent wearing the garment of Jesus Christ – the power and wisdom of Imagination! Now I know myself to be the power which can effect the fulfillment of desire!

Having no friend, car, money, or topaz, this lady remembered the power of which I speak. She exercised it, and instantly – without any form of transportation – found herself in my apartment telling me her dream. Now that is power! There is enormous power in wealth, as well as the atomic bomb; but their power is as a firecracker compared to the power of Imagination. Without any background or degree behind you, you can dwell in any state in your imagination just as though it were true; and in a way no one knows your power will take you (without a topaz, a friend, or a car) into the state of your choice. That is the power I have been sent to tell you about.

This power, personified as Jesus Christ, is vested in man as his Human Imagination. Jesus Christ is he who sent me. He has never left me, so when you see me, you see Him. And when I leave here, I will return to the body of Love.

This lady has been called. She has been faithful to the word and proved it to herself in the far regions of her mind. I have given her the word the Father gave me. She has received it and now knows the truth from personal experience. She saw power, personified as man. She knew he was God, yet the man she knew as Neville. She had to experience this in the depth of her soul in order to know that it was true.

Now, as I tell you another dream, remember: everything, no matter what it is, is a symbol. This lady found herself in a dormitory with many other girls. Each girl held a chart covering twelve days, with each day headed by the first letter of an event she would experience that day. A girl showed her a chart with the letter “K” marking the day, saying her child was to be kidnapped, as she needed that experience. Becoming angry, this lady told the girl she didn’t have to experience these things. That she could revise the day’s experience by using the power of her imagination. As doubt began to permeate the room, she took her own child and left.

After what appeared to be a very long time, this lady returned to find the room now occupied by another, who had removed her books. As she demanded their return, the scene changed, and she is in a room where everyone was singing because her grandmother was coming. Although her grandmother had died in 1962, she appeared to be young, with lots of vitality. They embraced and she could feel the coolness of her grandmother’s skin. Then her body became rigid and as it fell against the lady, she saw the symbolism of the act of love.

This lady has tasted of the power of the age to come, and now sees everything as a symbol and we, merely actors in the play of life. Returning to an old state, she sees it as the same play being repeated with slight modifications. While trying to bring the past back to its former state by replacing her books, she realizes it means nothing. And as she sees her grandmother alive, young, vital, and wonderful and recognizes the symbolism she represents, her grandmother vanishes from sight.

I have been sent to tell you of a power of which you may be totally unaware. To tell you that you do not need any social, intellectual, or financial background to achieve your goals. Do you realize you could be number one in the social register, have the intelligence of an Einstein and the money of a Rockefeller – yet not reach your objective? And you can have none of these things, yet fulfill your every desire if you will but believe me.

When the question was asked: “What is the work of God?” the answer came: “To believe in him whom he has sent.” This does not mean to believe in Neville as a man, but to believe what I tell you. Divorce the man from the message and believe in my words, for I and my Father are one and the words I speak are those of my Father, who is Jesus Christ.

Knowing his physical origin, Jesus was condemned for always being in the company of tax collectors and sinners. And when they asked him where he came from, he answered: “If I told you, you would not believe me.” When asked: “Who is your father?” he replied: “If you knew me, you would know my father also, but you know neither me nor my father. My father is he who you call God. I know my father and you know not your God.” Then they took up stones and stoned him, because they did not believe his ultimate origin, and saw only his physical one.

I was born in a little island called Barbados. My physical origin can be verified, but my ultimate origin can only be known when he who sent me reveals it. Do you know that the phrase “he who sent me” is placed on the lips of Jesus twenty-five times in the gospel of John; yet no one could understand his words, for they persisted in seeing the physical garment he wore, and not God, the wearer.

Exercise your creative power! Prove the truth of my words in the depth of your being as this lady did. Then you will be called – not on the surface of your mind, for the drama of scripture is supernatural. It takes place while you walk the earth, but in a deeper region of the soul.

The disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, or John, were not called while fishing. They are symbolic states of the mind that believed what they heard and were called in the depth of the mind.

No man is ever called because of his facial beauty, his social position, or wealth, even though the churches recognize them here. Have you ever noticed that the best church pews are always reserved for the rich? When I was a boy, we didn’t have much money, but we had a little position, so we had our own pew. Every Sunday morning mother would bring her brood to sit in that pew. Today, reserved or purchased pews are a thing of the past; but even though the name is not allowed, it is still an unwritten law in all the so-called “proper” churches to reserve certain pews for those who have large sums of money. And when the minister sees them there he tears up his prepared sermon and tells them what they want to hear, knowing that if he doesn’t they won’t be back to give him more money.

I know this to be true. In New York City, Saint Luke’s Hospital sits between Saint John the Divine and Saint Thomas Cathedrals. A lady willed two million dollars to Saint Thomas, if Bishop Manning died before her.
Otherwise, the hospital (run by the Episcopal church) would receive the money. Well, the old boy outlived her, so Saint Luke’s fell heir to two million dollars. That is what goes on in all of these so-called proper churches and hasn’t a thing to do with being called, or knowing the only true God.

I was sent to tell you that your own wonderful Human Imagination is the real Christ! You will prove this to yourself if you will test yourself and see if you are holding to the faith. My friend tested herself when she found she was denuded of a friend. She had no car, money for a taxi, or topaz to sell; but remembering my words, she went within and as she imagined herself in my home she was instantly there. Having met the test, she is called.

This lady had a double dream, which means that the thing is fixed by God and will shortly come to pass. Being doubled, the dream contains a double jet of truth which is: she met the test, and she entered the circle.

I do not feel it will be long before I will vanish, leaving not a trace behind. This cannot happen, however, until I have finished the work I was given to do. Only then can I ask my Father to return me to the glory that was mine, the glory I possessed before that the world was. I, Imagination, came out from the Father. That is pre-existence! Entering the world, I now wear a garment of flesh in order to form a nucleus of those who believe in their Human Imagination. They will reach the seventy, then the 144, and go on from there. I take comfort in her vision, for it indicates that my work is finished and departure will shortly come to pass.

Believe me! The story of how God became man that man may become God, is the most glorious story ever told. But man must be constantly reminded that this God is his imagination, and the powerhouse of the world! Infinite power resides in your Imagination. You could be in prison and imagine yourself free. Believing in the reality of your imaginal act, it would make no difference to you how you are released. But when it happens and you find yourself where you imagined you were, you will have tested and recognized the infinite power you are. Imagining, you set yourself free; and when God sets you free, you are free indeed.

Jesus never violated the law of Caesar. Looking at a coin he said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. If Caesar wants more taxes, ask your heavenly Father to provide more money for you by imagining you have it.” Your heavenly Father, who dwells within you, has the power to set you free, while a god believed to be on the outside will enslave you.

In the book of 1 Samuel, the story is told of how the people, wanting to be like all the others, desired to have a leader over them. Then Samuel said: “A king will take your sons from you for his army. He will take your maid servants, your male servants, your daughters and your money. And when he has taken everything from you, he will take you. In that day he will enslave you as he has all the others. Then you will cry out to be saved from a god of your own choosing, but in that day I will have no ears to hear you.” In spite of the warning the people chose Saul, who enslaved them exactly as the prophet Samuel had foretold.

You want a king? A dictator? A savior on the outside? You are free to choose one, but I will prophesy for you: Any power outside of yourself will enslave you!

Knowing that he embodies infinite power, Jesus turned to those who seized him, and said: “Do you think I cannot now pray to my Father and he will send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then can scripture be fulfilled, that it must be so?” I came into the world, promising the one who sent me (which is myself) that I would subject myself to all the limitations of the flesh and drink the cup of experience, until time proves that I am God, and own the world. Knowing who I am, I have the power to call forth twelve legions of angels, but I will drink this experience to the last drop. Then – having done exactly what I was commissioned to do – I will return to Him who sent me, who will say: “Enter, my faithful servant, into the joy of the Lord.” And there is no joy like being once more reincorporated into the body of love!

Now let us go into the silence.

Robert Browning tells us:

“Truth is within ourselves.
It takes no rise from outer things
No matter what you see.
There is an inmost center in us all
Where truth abides in fullness to know,
Rather than insist on opening up a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape
That is effecting everything
As a light that is supposed to be without.”

The disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, or John, were not called while fishing. They are symbolic states of the mind that believed what they heard and were called in the depth of the mind.

You want a king? A dictator? A savior on the outside? You are free to choose one, but I will prophesy for you: Any power outside of yourself will enslave you!

Now let us go into the silence.

INFINITE STATES

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 03-22-1968

Quite often someone will say to me: “I don’t think others understand you.” I was asked this question: ‘When you use the word ‘state’ I don’t think others know what you mean, so would you please explain it?'” Tonight I will try.

We are told: ‘You are sons of the Most High, all of you.” (Not just a few, but all of us). “Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall”…..into infinite states of consciousness, for states are that into which the sons of the Most High fall. A state is an attitude of mind, a state of experience with a body of beliefs which you live by.

Always expressing a state, you identify yourself with it by saying: “I am poor or I am rich. I am known or I am unknown. I am wanted or I am unwanted.” I could go on indefinitely, because there are infinite states into which an individual son of the Most High may fall.

Blake made this statement: “Eternity Exists and All things in Eternity Independent of Creation which was an act of Mercy. By this it may be seen that I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep which the Soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of Good and Evil.” When you find yourself in a state or see a seeming other in a state, do not condemn or praise it, for all states exist and no state is greater than another. Every state is an attitude, a state of experience with a body of beliefs that an individual son of the Most High occupies. And if that an individual son of the Most High, then are we not brothers of the Highest Unity? And are we not also members of the ultimate body who is God the Father? So the states into which we fall cannot mar or in any way deter our immortal self who fell.

Your creative power did not willingly fall. It was your Father’s will that you, his creative power, descend into and experience states. In the 8th chapter of Romans, Paul tells us: ‘He was made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by reason of the will of him who subjected him in hope. There is unity in God, yet God the Father is made up of gods, the sons. So God’s creative power fell into division and passes through states which results in resurrection into unity. As a son of the Most High you can, in the twinkle of an eye, move into any state, but the chances are you will not remain there for a state is made up of a body of beliefs! If you spend the day thinking from a certain base, a certain body of beliefs, the chances are you will fall asleep that night in the same belief. Knowing you can move into another state, another body of beliefs, you may try to move, but you must persist in staying in the new state until it becomes natural.

There are unnumbered states and the occupant of one state is not better than the occupant of another, for each is a brother in the highest unity and all are one in the body of God the Father. But the state, the attitude of mind to which you most constantly return, constitutes your dwelling place. If you dwell in self- pity you will express the state, but by occupying that state you are not less than one who has ambitions to enter the White House, or the Vatican as the Pope. The individual desiring an ambitious state is not greater than or less than the one who doesn’t know he is in a state and remains subjected to it.

How do you get out of a state? Through belief! You must believe in the doctrine. You are told: “Whatsoever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” The precepts of Christ must be accepted literally, for they will be fulfilled literally. Can you believe the precept that believing you have already received your desire will bring it forth in your world? If so, then tonight you can change the things that are happening in your world. And if you can believe and persuade yourself that things are as you want them to be to the point of actually moving into the feeling they are true, they will be felt and seen in your world. You must feel your desires are already realized, that they are already true, for the truth of any concept is known by the feeling of certainty that the thought is true.

Assuming you are not the man (or woman) you want to be, you will know that you are really it by the feeling of certainty it inspires in you, for if you feel certain, you will act upon it. If you don’t act you are not convinced, for God in you is your own wonderful human imagination and God is always acting! You may be physically incapacitated, but you are forever acting in your imagination, who is God, the Father of your life.

By states I mean attitudes of mind. The New Testament begins: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” The word ‘repent’ means ‘a radical change of attitude’. Your attitude need not be towards another, but an attitude regarding self. If you feel you have nothing to live for you must repent by changing your attitude radically from that state. Don’t condemn yourself for the state into which you have fallen. If you don’t like it move into another. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, for if you do you will make the state a habit and remain there for the rest of your days on earth. Instead, you can believe this doctrine and move out of any state.

Let me illustrate with this story. A gentleman, who attends the lectures, and his wife moved into their new home at the beach. Wanting some landscaping done, they invited five landscape artists to give them bids. Two wouldn’t even bid because of the location of the property but after choosing one, the lawns and gardens as well as several trees were planted. Within six months three trees had died. Now, instead of getting angry and calling the man, demanding the trees be replaced, my friend decided to test his imagination; so while sitting in his car he imagined that he was leaning against the one healthy tree while gazing at the three which had appeared to be dead, but were now healthy and beautiful. Then one day the landscape artist came to the house, inquiring about the garden, especially the trees. It seems his men had used too much nitrogen in the fertilizer, which caused the roots to burn. Upon seeing the trees, he returned the following Tuesday and replaced them free of charge.

This same gentleman shared another experience with me, saying: ‘On my way to work the other morning I passed a very prominent building and said to myself, “I wonder what it would be like to work there?” Knowing nothing about the company, I played with the idea of them offering me a fantastic salary and even imagined seeing my name on the office door. That very day while at work I received a call from an agency hired to fill the executive positions for the company whose building I had passed, and whose employment I had just imagined. The agency was calling to ask if I would consider working for their client. I was so shocked to realize that the law could work so quickly, but now I know it does!”

You don’t have to remain in a state if you have made a mistake. You can change states morning, noon, and night, but the state to which you most constantly return constitutes your dwelling place. It is from there you are going to live and perpetuate until you move in thought. As Blake said: “The oak is cut down by the ax and the lamb is slain by the knife, but their eternal form remains forever and reproduces its external form by the seed of contemplative thought.”

The being that you really are, descended to the weakness of the flesh, causing you to experience the state you are now in. Contemplate another state, and the same being who brought your present form into being will restore and make alive the other state, the state desired. This he will continue to do until his purpose is fulfilled. That purpose is to follow a certain pattern back into the unity of being. You see, in the beginning we were drafted. We did not volunteer to fall into these states. We were made subject into futility, not willingly but by the will of him who sent us. But when we return we will discover that we are the very being who subjected us. We are now the sons, destined to return as God the Father!

Now let me share with you a word that I use night after night. The word is ‘David’ and means ‘lover; beloved’ but specifically ‘father’s brother’. We are all brothers, yet after my resurrection and return into unity David (father’s brother) called me Father. The day will come when David will call you Father too, for he is [the] father’s brother. We are all brothers of the highest unity, predestined to resurrect into that unity which was broken in our fall into division. So David’s name in the most specific sense is ‘uncle”. If David is the father’s brother and everyone is a brother in the fall into division, when resurrected into unity David is he who reveals everyone as the Father. Unity was broken for a purpose. God’s creative might descended to experience states in order to become greater than it was prior to the descent. Having unity in thought, creative power fell into division and will be resurrected back into unity of thought once more.

So when I speak of states I am speaking of states of consciousness, attitudes of mind which create a body of belief. My sister and brothers at home do not believe in the same Christ as I do, even though we were all born in the same family and raised in the same environment. My brothers call themselves Christians but their definition of Christ would differ from mine. From their state of consciousness they believe in a man who lived two thousand years ago, yet I would tell you that Christ is God’s creative power and wisdom which descends into states, resurrects, and returns as the being who sent it out. The day will come when you will understand all of these precepts as being literally true. Here is one to be found 1 John, the 3rd chapter, the 2nd verse: “We are now the children of God; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.” How will we know him? By becoming as he is! The preachers of the world will tell you that when he comes, you will be like him in character, in your attitude towards life. You will be kind and considerate and have his fine qualities, but I tell you: you will be like him who is in the depths of your soul meditating you! This I know from experience.

It was in the year 1936 when I saw the rock that scripture claims as the God who gave me birth. One day while quietly sitting in the silence, a rock suddenly appears before my vision. Then it divides itself and just as quickly reassembles itself into a man seated in the lotus posture, meditating deeply. As I looked closer I discovered I was seeing myself meditating me! And then I knew that when he awoke I wouldn’t vanish, but rather I would know that I am He! This thing called Neville who stands before you is his emanation. He brought it into being, and although you cut off its head a thousand times he will restore its eternal form by the seed of contemplative thought.

Nothing ceases to be, because all things exist in eternity and can be brought into being by this meditative being, who looks just like you, only raised to the nth degree of majesty. You have never seen your face look so beautiful. You have never seen it contain such majestic power, such strength of character. Looking at himself and knowing there is no other, as he glows like the sun you return to the being he is meditating in this world of mortality. When you have this experience you will have nothing to do with anyone who claims he or she is Christ. You will let no one deter you, for when you see him you will be just like him. Have you ever seen anyone in this world who is exactly like you? Your children may resemble you but if you put a picture of one of them beside yours, you would know they were pictures of different people, would you not? No one has the same fingerprints or the same odor as another. But when you meet the rock that begot you and the God who gave you birth, you will know him because you will be just like him.

When you see this being in the depth of your soul you are seeing the one who descended into these states, meditating himself. You are his emanation, his reflection playing the parts he dreams. And when he awakes from his descent and begins to ascend, you are He! No two seeds of contemplative thought in the depths of the soul are identical. We are all brothers, and having been subjected, when we return to unity we are God the Father. Now you see who the word ‘David’ means – ‘the father’s brother’. God the Father is my brother, who one day will rise and, taking me back to the unity of being, he will call me Father. That is David! That is the play! That is the mystery of life!

Now to come back to the beginning. Everything is a state. You can be any man, any woman that you want to be when you understand the mystery of states. A state is simply an attitude of mind, a body of belief, a phase of experience. Now, don’t be like the moon, which changes from a quarter, to a half, to three quarters, to full – or the earth, which repeats itself over and over again season after season. Have you ever noticed that at certain times of the year, the same set of circumstances happen to you? Every year it is always very hot when it is time for your vacation or you are always broke around Christmas? Or that when you eat strawberries you always break out in a rash? All of these are patterns created in the world of states in which we all live.

There are infinite states and combinations of states into which God, your own wonderful human imagination, falls. Fortunately there is a limit, which comes when infinite mercy (who is within you) steps beyond and awakens himself; and as he does, you – the one he put through the torment – awaken, enhanced by the descent into these states. And as one you return, bringing your gifts which are the result of your experiences traveling through these states. You bring your talents, of which the greatest is the art of forgiveness, the ability to enter into and partake of the opposite. When you see someone in despair can you represent him to yourself as he would like to be seen? And can you persuade yourself that what you see is real? To the degree that you are self-persuaded he will become that man. Then you will have conquered by forgiveness! You will have taken him out of one state and placed him in another.

Now, every act of kindness is a death in the divine image for in every act you sacrifice yourself. Making alive what you no longer want to see, you die to that and live in what you want to see, so every kindness to another is a death in the divine image. By representing others to myself and persuading myself that they are as I would like them to be, to the degree that I am self-persuaded they will become it, and as they do I die to what I formerly made alive. I lived in what I thought them to be, and then I died to that thought. I did it deliberately so I laid it down myself! I have the power to lay it down and the power to pick it up again. I purposely laid my life down to what I saw and lifted it up to what I wanted to see, thereby resurrecting another (who is myself) into a new state. How often must I do it? Seventy times seven or as long as it takes me to convince myself that it is true. When I lay down my life for another he is my brother, for we have the same Father. As brothers we fall into states and resurrect ourselves into the unity of the Father!

So the greatest talent, the greatest challenge to overcome, is the art of forgiveness. By forgiveness I do not mean a verbal agreement, leaving the memory of what was forgiven. To completely forgive I must completely forget the event. No matter what was said, if you forgive me you can’t even remember what I did or said. Only willing to see what you want to see, if you persuade yourself that you are now what you want to be, you have forgotten what you were before. That’s forgiveness.

True forgiveness is complete forgetfulness. Blake tells us: “The art of living is forgetting and forgiving.” If you don’t completely forgive you cannot forget, for to forgive is to change your attitude towards another, and as you change you forget what they said or did, thereby no longer keeping them in the state that compels them to do what they did! While in a state, man must play the part the state dictates, and man must play every part. God in his infinite mercy has hidden from us the parts we have played, because the shock would be too great if we were to see the horrors that we have committed as we passed through all these states. You see, when you fall into a state you can’t help but act from that premise, and you can fall into any state!

I am not telling you that one state is right and another wrong. I am simply asking you to judge all states with love. If you are ever in doubt always do the loving thing. Then you will know you are doing the right thing. If someone comes to you and tells you they want a job, don’t ask him how he lost his previous job; simply hear him tell you he now has a wonderful job. Do that and you have taken him out of the state of unemployment and placed him in the state of the gainfully employed.
I urge you to use your own wonderful creative power and deliberately move into the state of your choice. Make it now by occupying the state long enough so that it feels natural. Haven’t you had a suit of clothes that felt so new you were conscious of them every moment? I know when I bought my first suit I walked down Fifth Avenue thinking everyone I passed knew my suit was new. People passing paid no attention to me, but I was so aware, so conscious of my new suit. That’s exactly that happens when you move into a new state. If the state of affluence is new, you think everyone knows it, but no one knows or cares whether you are rich or poor, so walk in the state until it becomes natural. The moment the feeling is natural, wealth is yours!

I paid thirty dollars for my first suit. Today a suit will cost me $200.00, but regardless of the cost, when the suit is new I am aware of it. But let me wear it long enough for it to feel natural and I will no longer be conscious of it. The same is true for a state. You may desire the state of fame. If you will think you are famous and remain conscious of the state long enough to make it natural, as the thoughts flow from you they become a natural part of your body of beliefs, and the world will proclaim your fame.

Now let us go into the silence.

IS CHRIST YOUR IMAGINATION

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 03-22-1963

Tonight’s subject is in the form of a question: “Is Christ your Imagination?” When we ask the question we expect the answer in terms of our current background of thought, and quite often that is not adequate to frame the answer.

Now, I am asking the question, and in order to answer myself I should really clarify the terms, “imagination” and “Christ” I think there will be no problem tonight if I define – say – “imagination.” I think you will agree with me when I define “Christ.” If I say to that, that imagination is the power of performing mental images, you wouldn’t quarrel with that.

Sitting here tonight, you can think of anything and see it mentally. You may not see it as graphically as you see it in its present form in the room at the moment, but you could see it vividly in the mind’s eye and discriminate. Think of a tree, a horse, and you know the difference between one and the other, and they are two separate objects in your mind’s eye. Well, that is the power of imagination.

When it comes to Christ – and there are hundreds of millions in the world that call themselves Christians – the very use of the word instantly conjures in the mind’s eye a person. They think of Christ as a person, and no two have the same mental picture of this person. I know, many, many years ago in New York City this French artist went to the library on 42nd street and brought up 46 different pictures of Christ and screened them with his little lantern. No two were alike, and each artist claimed that this was an inspired picture as it was presented to him, and he painted the picture. There were blond and blue-eyed pictures, dark swarthy skin; there were those with a very black skin – all 46 pictures were projected as so-called originals. So, man has been conditioned to believe that Christ is a person. So I ask the question: “Is Christ your imagination?” Can I personify the imagination? I will.

Let us go back to the Bible. What does the Bible say of Christ? In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (I will just give you the highlights) he defines Christ as: “The power and the wisdom of God.” (1:23, 24) In John 1 (which brings Christology to its height, as far as the Bible goes – there is no single book that takes the secret of Christ and brings it to this height as you will find in the Gospel of John) – in the Gospel of John, speaking now of this presence that was with God, his meaning, his power: “By Him all things were made and without Him was not anything made that was made.” It is the power and yet it is wisdom. So here is a creative power. If I take that now and analyze myself in another world, the sign goes to the end of the second letter to the Corinthians. He calls upon all of us who would read that letter: “Test yourself. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” Here we are told: “All things were made by Him.” He is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Every attribute of God is personified. So his power is personified, and may I confess I have seen that power – and it is a man. I have seen that wisdom – and it is a man. And when you stand in the presence of that personified aspect of infinite being, you know you are standing in the presence of infinite might. It is not just power, it is almighty-ness, and you stand in the presence – and yet it is a man. So here he calls it the power and the wisdom.

Now he asks me, and you who read his letter, to test ourselves: “Test yourself, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee.” (2 Corinthians 13:5) And he made all these things – well then, let us put him to the test in us. I say he is our imagination, that is the power, the creative power of the universe. Look around. Do you know anything in the world of man that man has created – from the clothes that he wears to the homes that he inhabits – that wasn’t first imagined? Do you know of anything in this world that is now proved as fact, as a concrete reality, that wasn’t first imagined – only imagined, and then it externalized? Yes, using hands, using implements of the world, but it first began as an image, and an image is simply the product of this reforming image-making faculty in man, which is man’s imagination. Now, if “All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made,” I can’t come to any other conclusion than the fact that Christ of scripture is my imagination.

Now who is Jesus? If Christ is the power and the wisdom of God, and God sunk himself in us, that was his sacrifice. He actually became us that we may live; for were it not for this sacrifice of God, to actually limit himself to the state called “man,” man would – like the earth – wear out like a garment. As we are told in Isaiah 51:6: “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will do likewise; but my salvation will be for ever and my deliverance will never be ended.” That word “salvation” means Jesus. The word “Jesus” is “Jehovah saves.” That is salvation. That is forever. Were it not that God became man that man may become God, to save man and lift him up to immortality, because the promise is: “The earth will wear out like a garment.”

Our scientists tell us today that the sun is melting in radiation. If it took unnumbered billions of years, if it started a process of melting, no matter how long it takes it has an end, and with its end we have our end as part of the system. So we, walking the earth, always have an end. To stop that process of bringing man to an end: “My salvation will be for ever and my deliverance will never have an end.”

So, God became man that man may become God. In becoming man (as God is the only creative power in the world) what in me creates? My imagination. I may not have the talent to put it on paper, I may not have the ability to execute it the way artists can, but I can imagine it. I can imagine a book and the joy of having a book. I can imagine a picture. Without being an artist I can dream. I cannot conceive of a picture that a man can paint on canvas that is more alive than my dream, yet I can’t put a thing on canvas. But I go to sleep and I can dream. And what is doing it, if not my imagination? And here when I lose the conscious faculty, this restricted area, I can actually dream. Dream as no artist in the world conveys; put color upon it, put motion upon it, and have the most wonderful drama – and that is my imagination.

But this is not the only power and wisdom of God. In the greatest of all the New Testament, which is John, John does not emphasize the power. He states in the beginning – yes, he declares might as power – but the emphasis is not on power; it is on redemption and revelation. Revelation in John’s gospel is an act of God in self-revealing. So, in the first chapter he tells us what this power will do for us. First of all there are two endings to John. Let us take the real ending, which is the 20th chapter, the first ending, and whoever the writer is who calls himself John: “Now Jesus did many other signs that are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ . . .and believing have life in his name.” He is the power and the wisdom of God. That is what the author is telling us in the very end. Many signs he did, but in spite of the number of the signs and the character of the signs, it did not evoke faith. The whole teaching of the Gospel of John is based upon faith and unbelief in him. Either one or the other. Have faith in him, or you disbelieve in him, and few believed in him – few, we are told, even his disciples. Only a few believed and they imperfectly.

Well now, who is Jesus? Christ is the power and the wisdom, but who is Jesus? We have this wonderful thought expressed in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:6-11): “Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.” That identifies man with a slave, every man. “And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name” (not an indefinite article) “which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” He gave him the name, and it is above every name, and at that name every power in the world must bend, at the name of names. That is the name called Jesus, which is Jehovah. Jesus simply is Jehovah’s name.

Every child born of woman in this world one day wears that name. There is only one name, only one being: Jesus. You go through the same story as told us in the gospel – everyone will – and when he passes through this series of events, that name is conferred. Conferred on the risen Christ. That power is latent in man, that is man’s imagination. Where it is lifted up, on that risen Christ, the name Jesus – the divine name, Jesus – is conferred, and that individual then enters a new age. An entirely different age that is immortal, eternal, because until the end of that age we are still subject to being worn out like a garment (as told us in the 51st [chapter] of Isaiah.) So everyone is moving on that wheel that is being worn out, wearing out like a garment and vanishing like smoke, like the heavens. But not one will fail, for God redeems us and God resurrects us, one after the other, lifts us up and confers on that risen Christ the name – the name, Jesus.

When Blake was asked quite innocently about the mysterious name: “What do you think of Jesus?” without batting an eye, Blake replied: “Jesus is the only God,” and then hastened to add: “But so am I, and so are you.” So in the end, all believed the name where the power – all Christ in man – is lifted up, lifted up so that the whole vast wonderful being that was sunk in man is now awake. What that body is like, I can’t describe it to anyone. I can’t find words to describe the glory that is yours, for everyone. It certainly isn’t this, I assure you, yet I will know you and you will know me in eternity. But for all the sameness of identity we will actually know each other. There will be a radical discontinuity of form (not the form I now wear here today and have for the last fifty-eight years) – but identity…yes, you will know me.

But how to display the glory of the being that you are when you are resurrected? This is shown us by the Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection. They are the modern scientists. The Sadducees of 2,000 years ago were the wise men. The Pharisees were the priesthood of the world. The Sadducees were the intellectual giants of that day and they – any more than today – could not even believe in survival, far less resurrection. Like the world today puts the two words together and they speak of survival as resurrection – and they are not. Survival is continuity; resurrection is discontinuity. You leave the field completely and enter the worlds of eternity.

So they ask the question based upon the law of Moses, and Moses said: “If a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?” (Luke 20:27-33). It is a fable, because they did not believe in the resurrection. “And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” (Luke 34-36) They are completely above the organization of sex. What we call sex here, this garment of flesh, are shadows thrown by this fabulous being above. And the body you really have, you are told (as I quoted earlier, Philippians 2:6): “Being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men, didn’t think it strange. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” And then to find himself with all the limitations of man, all the weaknesses of man, everything that is man? Then God exalted him at the end when he resurrected him and gives him the name. That name is conferred only at resurrection.

So, everyone will get it, for everyone will be resurrected. Then you will not be wearing these bodies, wonderful as they are for us, filled with all the passions of the world, and they are all wonderful – but it is not the body you will wear. You will be completely above the organization of sex. No need for this kind of creativity. Imagination becomes completely awake and you will create at will, and your imaginal act will become an immediate objective fact. And what we call reality today, all this fabulous world of ours – may I tell you I have seen it – it is all imagination. When man has played his part and God has completed his purpose (which is to bring forth from us himself and make us all gods with him) then these garments – made up of all the elements that feel so permanent and so wonderful – they will vanish like smoke. There isn’t an element that wasn’t brought into being by the creative power of God, by his own wonderful divine imagining, and it is sustained in me because he sustains it by his imaginal act. When he ceases that imaginal act all the elements will melt, all vanish, and the world will be as though it never existed. But you and I will be lifted up above it all into an entirely different world, an eternal world.

So is Christ your imagination? I say Christ is the power and the wisdom of God, and this power and this wisdom creates everything in the world. I can trace to my own being an imaginal act that became fact, then I repeated it and it became fact. If I can repeat it and repeat it, and these imaginal acts externalize themselves in facts, then I have found it. Found that power in myself, for the Bible calls him Christ and personifies it and speaks of [this] presence as a man – but that man is Jesus. Jesus Christ is simply the resurrected being that is God now, because he has resurrected the power within him, which is Christ. Now he is called “the Lord,” and everything should bow before him when it happens. I say to you: the day will come you will have the experience, and you will be startled. No one will believe you; they aren’t going to believe you anymore than they believed the first person to whom it happened. He is the first that rose from the dead, but no one believed him. Up to the very end who would believe the story?

They were looking for a different kind of Messiah, a conquering hero who would come just like a man out of some glorious background of warriors, and then conquer the enemy of Israel and lead Israel to some victorious end. They always look for that kind of a Messiah. We have them all over the world today, these false Messiah’s who promise the nations they will lead them to some victory, even a little temporary victory. That’s not Messiah. Messiah hasn’t a thing to do with this world; he is resurrected out of this world. This world is vanishing, wearing out just like a garment. Christ in man is the power and the wisdom; and then, that in man that is man’s imagination, becomes a mercy because he exercises it lovingly.

If I read John correctly, not only my salvation is dependent on it; I must actually believe in him. Who is the being? My own imagination. If I don’t believe and test it – even though I fail – well then, I don’t believe in Christ, for Christ is really my imagination, your imagination. So you imagine something lovely of another, and if you don’t believe in the reality of that imagination, then you don’t believe in Christ. Though you can go to church every day and give ten per cent of your income to the church of your choice – all these things are lovely, give them if you feel that way about it – but that is not Christ. That is not believing in Christ.

To believe in Christ is to see someone in this world, and have a sweet feeling towards that one that hasn’t yet realized how to be lovely, something without his knowledge. Then represent him to yourself as though it were true, and believe in the reality of what you have done mentally. Believe in Christ, for all things are possible to Christ. Bring him before your mind’s eye and see him as he would like to be seen by himself, as he would like the world to see him. But you do it and believe in the reality of what you have done. That is believing in Christ. You will be surprised beyond measure how it works. At that very moment, because: “All things by a law Divine in one another’s being mingle.” At that very moment that you interfere with his life, you reshuffle the entire deck, and all things will completely rearrange to mirror the change that is going to take place in him; and everyone in this world who can aid that change will be used to bring it about without their knowledge or consent. You don’t need the consent of any being in the world; if they can be used to externalize what you have imagined, they will be used. And when you least expect it, because you believe in Him, then God resurrects you. Then you will live it out, and you stand bewildered when you see what God did for you.

Everything claimed of him that you thought, that your mother taught you, happened 2000 years ago – it is happening. It didn’t stop. Go back and read Paul’s letter to Timothy: “Those who teach that the resurrection is past are misleading the faithful.” It isn’t a past: it took place in one, and it is taking place in unnumbered. It’s all over, the crucifixion is over, yes – but not the resurrection. The resurrection is taking place in everyone that is called and lifted up. As we are called, God’s mightiest act is performed. and we are lifted up and pass through the series of events leading into the kingdom of heaven. Though we seemingly remain here still wearing this garment for a little while, the garment will be shown you that you will occupy. You can’t describe it to anyone, even to your own satisfaction. It is such a living thing, so luminous; it is just light, like the rainbow. You can’t describe it to any being in this world who thinks only in terms of a garment of flesh.

Now we are told in the 1st chapter of John (11-13) – he is speaking of an entirely different kind of birth: “And those who believe in his name will be born, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Not born in any that this (the body) is born. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” only Spirit. When you are born, you are self-begotten. You have actually no parents. You come right out of a grain, the mystery of the grain of wheat that falls into the ground. If it doesn’t fall into the ground it remains alone; if it falls into the ground, it bears much fruit. The mystery of life through death, for God actually died to become you, to become me.

God is divine imagination and he limits himself to the very limit of contraction, called human imagination, and actually dies in the sense that all the power and all the memory of his glorious being had to be completely forgotten. So the cry on the cross is true: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” He himself has cried out, because he so completely gave himself to us he suffered total amnesia, complete forgetfulness of his divinity as he became us, and that was divine imagining becoming human imagining. Then we, building our little world – lovely as it is to many of us – it is so different, and the power we exercise is so fragile, compared with that same power when raised up, when lifted up and the great name which is above all names is conferred upon us. And the day will come, without loss of identity you will bear the name “Jesus.” Everyone is destined to be Christ Jesus – that power, with the name exercising infinite power – without loss of identity. We will know each other and all glorified, everyone. There is no limitation to the gift. Some will exercise it more than others, but certainly the gift is the same, the gift of Christ Jesus.

So my question, as far as I am personally concerned: “Is Christ your imagination?” I say: yes. And yet don’t limit it only to power and wisdom, for the emphasis is not on power and wisdom – it is on redemption, revelation. He reveals himself, and in that very first chapter, the prologue of John. The first eighteen verses are the prologue, and in the very last of the 18th verses he shows you the revelation: “No man has seen God at any time, but the son in the bosom of the father, he has made him known.” No one has seen him, but in the bosom of the father there is a son, and he reveals the father. Then we are told in the 10th [chapter] of Luke: “No one knows the son except the father. No one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.” There will come that moment in time when the son reveals you, and you will know your name is Jesus Christ the Lord, for the son is going to call you, “My Lord.” He is actually going to call you his father, his Lord, the rock of his salvation, and then you will know who you are.

I can tell you from now to the ends of time, but I can’t tell you the condition that experience will carry when it happens. And when it happens to you, it will make no difference to you if all the wise people in the world rise in opposition and tell you: you started from some grand little amoeba. It will make no difference to you whatsoever. This is revelation, and the whole thing is lifted – the veil is lifted – and now you know why you couldn’t see the face of the father. You can see him only reflected in the son. There is no mirror to reflect the consciousness of the son. You can’t see your face because you are mirrored on earth; but that is not the face, and you only know your face in the beauty of your son. So, everyone in the world is destined to bear the name of Christ Jesus, the Lord.

Now let us go into the silence.

JEREMIAH’S DISCOVERY

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 11-17-1969

The body of scripture is the Word of God, which every child born of woman must hear, assimilate, understand, and fully accept. This belief will cause the Word to erupt within him, and as he experiences God’s Word, he discovers who he really is.

The Book of John begins: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God: all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. He was in the world, the world was made by him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home and his own people received him not.”

Now in the Book of Jeremiah he tells us: “Thy words were found and I ate them, and thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.” What was it that Jeremiah ate? The Word. And what is the Word? What did Jeremiah discover to be the truth concerning God? He discovered that God was the human imagination.

Blake tells this story in a simple way in his “Songs of Innocence” as.

THE LAMB

Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee?
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

Although this appears to be a nursery rhyme, Blake is telling a most profound truth: “I a child, and thou a lamb, we are called by his name.” In this poem, Blake is repeating the same story as recorded in the 15th chapter, the 16th verse of Jeremiah, telling us all that the human imagination is the God of scripture. Listen carefully to this statement by Blake: “Babel (the world with its multiple tongues) mocks saying there is no God or Son of God. That thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body, art all a delusion.

But I know thee, O Lord when thou ariseth upon my weary eyes even in this dungeon, this iron mill. For thou also sufferest with me although I behold thee not.” Then the Divine Voice replied: “Fear not! Lo, I am with thee always. Only believe in me that I have power to raise from death Thy brother who Sleepeth in Albion: fear not, O trembling shade.”

The prophet Jeremiah (which means “Jehovah will rise”) is telling us in his 15th chapter that we are called the Lord God of hosts. Man is destined to discover that he is the Lord God of hosts, even though he now wears a garment of flesh and is restrained.

Restricted by all the weaknesses and limitations of the flesh, the body you wear decays – but it is not you. It is a mask that you, the Lord God of hosts, is wearing. One day you will know this from experience; and then – no matter what the world will say – you will know the truth, and in that knowing you will be set free.

I have experienced scripture. Even though I continue to wear this garment, which is slowly wearing out and must one day be discarded, I will no longer be restored into another garment similar to this one as I will depart this sphere altogether to become one with the body which was mine before that the world was; and wherever that body is, there is heaven.

There is no realm called heaven. You are in heaven by reason of the fact that you wear the body which has awakened within you. It is the imaginative body, and wherever it goes is heaven. Not a thing can remain imperfect in its presence. If you go into hell, instantly (not over a period of time, but instantly) hell is transformed into heaven.

Now, what did Jeremiah mean when he said: “Thy words were found and I ate them”? How can one eat words? One year when I was in Barbados, I visited a mental institution with my brother, Lawrence, who was the doctor there. As we walked down the hall I could hardly believe my eyes, as I saw men tear pages out of the Bible and eat them. They were taking Jeremiah’s statement literally.

But the prophets were inspired and wrote what they heard and saw; yet our early church fathers added to their words in order to conform to the church’s traditions and conventions, completely changing the picture. Let me give you a couple of examples.

The 3rd chapter of the Book of John tells of a conversation between one called Nicodemus – a master of what is considered right concerning God – and one who had experienced God and claimed: “When you see me you see the Father, for I am the Father.” It is he who makes this statement: “Unless you are born from above you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Then Nicodemus questioned: “How can one who is old once more enter into his mother’s womb and be born?” The answer is recorded in the 5th verse as: “Truly, truly I say unto you, unless you are born of water and the spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Here we find the words “water and” are not in the original script. They have been added by the early fathers of the church to support their tradition of baptizing a child with water.

In the 8th verse, the Lord continues, saying: “The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell whence it comes and whether it goes, so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” Here the word “water” is not used, and the spirit is likened to the wind. So, as the spirit (wind) moves where it wills, you will hear its sound, but you will not be able to tell whence it comes or whither it goes. This is true with everyone who is born of the spirit.

My mother came to this country when my little boy was two and a half years old, and one of the first questions she asked was if he had been baptized. When she learned he had not, she was shocked, and said: “Suppose he dies. Then he can’t go to heaven.” Mother was struck by the words “water and spirit,” and to her it meant baptism by water; but water hasn’t a thing to do with it. The word was added, as it brings in quite a good income. Although the fathers do not charge for the little ceremony, it is expected that something be given for the event. This is one of the many little indulgences of our churches.

I know, however, from having been born from above, that the wind is correct and the water is false. I heard the wind. It was in my head, but seemed to come from without. I knew not whence it came and whether it went. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit, and it hasn’t a thing to do with water. Although water and blood are symbols of birth, the statement in the 34th verse of the 19th chapter of John: “When his side was pierced out came water and blood” the word “water” was added.

Remember, the body of scripture is the Word and the Word is God. The Word is to be eaten by assimilation, and what cannot be assimilated (like the physical world) must be rejected or eliminated. Starting with the 51st verse of the 6th chapter of John, eliminate the second half of the 51st verse right through the 58th verse, then go into the 59th: “I am the bread that came down from heaven. He who eats my body will live forever. This he said in the synagogue.” In between these nine verses you will find the words which support the holy communion, all added by the early fathers to support the traditions of the church.

I have mentioned only a few verses, but I could take you through the entire Bible and show you many places where the words were changed to make them conform to the traditions of the church.

When my mother insisted that my son be baptized, I took him down to an Episcopal minister, where he put a little water on his head. The only thing that happened during that ceremony was that my son got his head wet. It certainly did nothing for him spiritually. But, in spite of the warnings mentioned at the end of Proverbs: “Let no one add to or take from the word of the prophecies of this book,” and Revelation, regarding the adding to or taking away from the words of the book, our early fathers did not heed them.

Rather they tried to make the words conform to their traditions and conventions. The Book of John has many mighty I AM statements: “I Am the light of the world; I AM the bread of life; I AM the door: I AM the way,” but at no time did he ever say, “I AM the convention, or I AM the tradition;” yet, to support the traditions of the church, the early fathers added to the word of God.

I tell you: behind the mask you wear is the only God. Divine Imagination reproduced himself in you as your human imagination; and because Divine Imagination contains all, everything is contained in the human imagination. One day you will awaken to this fact and discover that the world is yourself pushed out, just as the world is God pushed out. As this knowledge awakens in you, you begin to expand in the bosom of Divine Imagination, for you – human imagination and God, Divine Imagination – are one creator.

You are eating the body of God as you hear the word. Now assimilate it by dwelling upon it. Nehemiah tells us: “They read from the word of God with interpretation and gave the meaning so the people understood that which was read.” As you dwell upon God’s word its meaning will be revealed to you from within.

The New Testament is only the fulfillment of the Old. Identifying the word with the bread of life, John is telling us he has fulfilled the statement in Jeremiah: “Your words were found and I ate them and they became a joy to me and the delight of my heart, for I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

Unable to pay rent, buy clothes, or feed your family because of the limitations of the body you now wear, you may find it difficult to believe that you are the Lord God of hosts – but you are. No one imposed this limitation on you; you did it all by yourself. You have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again.

You did it in order to expand your power and your wisdom, for your journey is one of constant expansion and you could not expand unless you first contracted. You have to reach the limit of contraction and opacity called Man, before you can break the shell to discover your true identity which is contained within that shell (body) you have been wearing. Then you – the God who created the world – will begin to expand beyond what you were when you decided to contract in order to expand. Everyone will succeed. Not one will fail!

Today you may be satisfied with your earnings and the place in which you live in your contracted form; but one day you will eat (experience) the word of God and expand to the awareness of knowing, “I am He.” This will happen only when the hunger for such an experience comes upon you, as told us in the Book of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the land. It will not be a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.”

The average person is not interested in hearing revealed truth. Yesterday I read a sermon in the paper where the minister said that religion should be rooted in reason. What nonsense! Religion is revealed truth. How could the story of the birth from above be explained logically? How could one like Nicodemus, born from the womb of woman and approaching the grave, be born from above logically?

The world thinks “above” is out there – but it is within. You came “out” by being born from below. Only by being born from “within” can you enter the kingdom of heaven. That withinness is from above, and that aboveness is the skull of Man. That’s where the spiritual birth takes place and there is no water present.

If it pleases your family to have the little child baptized, do it; but baptism with water hasn’t a thing to do with entering heaven, for this world does not terminate at the point where your senses cease to register it. When someone dies here, it is because they have departed from the body they are now wearing, but they are still in a terrestrial world just like this one. Everyone is instantly restored to a terrestrial life until they are born from within (from above); then they are restored no more, for they are sons of God who now know themselves to be one with God.

Jeremiah discovered that Jehovah was his own wonderful human imagination. I know this to be true, for he has risen in me, and I now wear the garment in which he rose. It was mine before that the world was.

Then I took it off to come into this garment of flesh. While wearing it, all impossibilities are dissolved, as the touch of exaltation which arises in me imparts to my nature; and wherever I go, clothed in that form, is heaven.

Blake identified the human imagination with the divine body of the Lord Jesus Christ, saying: “Babel mocks saying there is no God or son of God, but thou, O human imagination, O divine body art all a delusion, but I know thee, O Lord.”

Knowing exactly what he had experienced and how he traveled across the bridge of incident which led him back into this mundane state called the waking world, he knew – when he opened his weary eyes – that he had returned. But in that realm, whatever he imagined happened; and he knew the power of the creator. He knew that all things were made by imagination, and without imagination was not anything made that was made.

If you awake in a dream and know exactly who is imagining it, you can control your dream. The same thing is true in this world. Become aware that it, too, is a dream. Awake! Remember who is imagining it, and control your day. Then one day you will completely awake to find yourself in that body which is the Lord Jesus Christ, to know that everything is your imagination pushed out. The restriction you imposed upon yourself when you came here was for the purpose of expansion, for you could not expand until you first reached the limit of contraction and opacity called man.

There are those who tonight will deny my words, but I know the truth of which I speak. When my mother told me of the word of God I believed her; but now I know the word of God from experience. My knowledge is not rooted in reason; it is revealed truth, and when truth is revealed, it is because God has unveiled himself in the individual. Truth cannot be proved logically. It must be experienced to be known; and when it is shared, some will believe and some will deny it. So when you read Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” remember: Blake is telling a profound truth in the language of the child that it may be kept alive. Because it is so beautifully told, his words will live forever:

“Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee?
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.”

In this simple poem Blake is sharing Jeremiah’s experience as recorded in his 15th chapter, the 16th verse. The lamb is a symbol. We took our own life when we entered this world, as we are the universal humanity which Blake calls Albion. We all fell into individuality and diversity. As the one Man gathers himself together, we will all rise, one by one, back into the same one Man who is God the Father. Everyone will be gathered, for the body will not be complete until all are redeemed.

You and I are the gods contained in the one God. The Hebrew word “Elohim” is sometimes translated singular and other times plural, as in the great confession of faith of the Hebrew: “Hear O Israel, the Lord (singular) our God (plural), the Lord (singular) is One” One Lord became numberless gods who are now being gathered back into the one Lord.

It is my hope that I can take from you the things that have been added to scripture, because they confuse the mind. Forget the word “water.” You are not born of water and the spirit. Yours is a spiritual birth, and no physical baptism has anything to do with it. If it pleases the family, baptize your child; but don’t think that because someone put a little water on its head that it had a spiritual experience, because it did not.

Everyone will, however, experience the real baptism, when he will stand in the presence of the Risen Lord, to be embraced into his body of love. Then he is sent to experience God’s Word, for “My Word cannot return unto me void, but must accomplish that for which I sent it, and prosper in the thing for which it was sent,” and God’s Word is Himself.

Penetrating your brain and annexing your body, God – now believing himself to be you – is going through the afflictions of the world as you until he awakens, in you.

Then you will see the world as nothing more than yourself pushed out. And if you don’t like what you see, you change it within yourself by changing your attitude towards it. As your attitude changes, so does your world, for everything is within you.

Then, one day, you will awaken to enter into and become one with the garment that was yours before the world was – to be one of the watchers from above, contemplating the world of death and eagerly awaiting the return of all your brothers. You and I were before that the world was. We still are, but we do not recognize one another. And when this world ceases to be, we will all be enhanced by reason of the experience of coming here and conquering death.

What I am telling you, I know from experience. I am not speculating or theorizing. In the world of Caesar I am weak and limited; but I know what I have experienced and I cannot deny them.

I know exactly what I had for dinner this night. I cannot deny the food I ate, any more than I can deny the visions I have had revealing my true nature – and I know that everyone is going to have them. When, I do not know. The day and hour remain the secret of the Father in you, for he will not awaken until he has accomplished his purpose. Having sent himself into the world clothed as you, when he awakens, you are the Lord God Almighty – but still restricted until you take off this fleshly garment of the actor, hang it up, and depart this stage forever.

But while we are here, we are given a law whereby, through its operation, we may know who God is. The law is simple. It is stated many ways, one of which is: “As a man sows, so shall he reap.” As you imagine you are the man (the woman) you would like to be, you are sowing that imaginal thought in your mind.

To the degree that you are faithful to that assumption, you will reap its fruit in your world; but first you must know what you want. You may not desire the wealth of a Rockefeller or the fame of a Richard Burton. I certainly have no desire for that kind of money or fame; but if someone tells me they really want it, I will pray for him that he has it.

Everything here is fading and will one day vanish; but the immortal you who does not function in this world, will live forever. Everything you have ever accomplished here will disappear, leaving not a trace behind; but the being of whom I speak is perfect, and functions in a realm of perfection.

There can be no blind, no deaf, no halt, no limitation whatsoever in that realm; rather, as you glide by, everything is transformed into the perfection that you know yourself to be. That is heaven. Heaven is not a locality but a body, a character, which – as it moves in the universe – it transforms everything into the perfection it knows itself to be. That then becomes the realm for the time, until it is left for anyone else to occupy, as it moves on to perfection elsewhere.

When you read the Book of John, don’t think of eating the body of a physical man or the pages of the Bible but the Word of God, which – having heard it with interpretation – you eat it by dwelling upon it through the act of assimilation. You cannot grasp it all at once.

Certain portions you may not be able to digest, so reject it for a while. Eventually you will eat the entire loaf as my friend saw it, as alive, pouring forth blood. The beautiful imagery she saw in her vision is telling her that she has completely accepted the truth, and knows that all things spring from her own wonderful human imagination. She has eaten my body and drunk my blood through her acceptance.

Now she knows she doesn’t have to go to church to have a little wafer and drink a sip of wine to eat the body of God. Rather, she knows she is doing it by accepting the fact that imagining creates reality. She may falter in proving it in the testing, but she has completely accepted it. That’s why the symbol came to her in a vision which she can always fall back upon.

Now she knows that she cannot pass the buck by blaming her husband or her children, but must turn to self and say: “No man takes my power from me, I lay it down myself. And no one comes to me save my Father calls him, for he and I are one.”

Someone may be a rascal and take from you what is yours; but when you know that imagining creates reality, you will acknowledge that no one could come into your life unless you called him. And he could not have taken from you unless you – by your attitude towards life – had allowed it.

The world is yourself pushed out, and you either control it or you don’t. That’s the story of scripture. There is no other God other than your own wonderful human imagination. If, when you speak of Jesus Christ, you mentally bow your head (if not physically) do the same thing when you think of your imagination, for that is he. Imagination is the Word of God who is God Himself. The world was created, is supported, and sustained, by your own wonderful human imagination. Change your imagining! Believe the change into being and you will live in a wonderful world of life.

Now let us go into the silence.

JESUS CHRIST

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 02-23-1968

Although only a few are teaching this wonderful principle at the present time, many others will follow; and because the Christian world believes in a man, this question will be asked over and over: “Do you not believe that a man called Jesus Christ walked the earth?” It is my hope that I will be able to clarify this point for you tonight.

Listen to these words from scripture: “You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Thy Word is truth.” And speaking of Jesus Christ: “His name shall be called the Word of God.” Here we see he has a name, so he is a person, yet he is the Word, the truth that sets man free. Confessing that he came into the world to do his Father’s will, in the 6th chapter of the book of John he makes this statement: “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.”

Now, there is not a truth (or a lie) that does not have a man as its agent, as it takes a man to express either a lie or a truth, and Jesus Christ is called the truth! So when you are called upon to answer the question: “Don’t you believe on e unique man was born in 4 B.C. and named Jesus Christ?” answer it in this way: “Jesus Christ is not a man, but God’s plan of salvation.

One of the saddest and yet poignant statements in the Bible is recorded in the Book of Samuel. David’s son, Absalom revolted against him and tried to take over the kingdom. All during the battle, however, David inquired over and over again: “How is it with the lad, Absalom?” And when he receives the news of Absalom’s death he goes up to the chamber over the gate of Jerusalem and weeps, crying: “Oh Absalom, my son, my son. Would I have died instead of you. Oh Absalom, my son, my son.” This is a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way of the story recorded in the New Testament.

In the New Testament, we find that God the Father does that which David longed to do. He longed to give his life to restore his son, but he couldn’t do it, for only God can give his live to save his Son. Speaking to humanity, Blake put these words into the mouth of Jesus: “Fear not! Unless I die thou can’st not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me. Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” God died by emptying himself of his divinity. He is not pretending he is dead, but actually becomes the very breath of life of every child born of woman.
Now walking in the forgetfulness of Man, God has prepared a plan for his return, a plan whereby everyone is redeemed.

This plan of redemption is Jesus Christ, but because it is personified man has taken the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction, and the agent that expressed the great truth for the truth expressed. If truth is to be expressed, it takes an individual man to express it. Therefore, when the story of redemption unfolds in a man, he relates his own experience.

Now we are told: “Everyone who sees and believes in the Son has eternal life.” The words “see” and “know” the same in both Hebrew and Greek, so if tonight I paint a word picture of the plan of salvation, I am showing you God’s Son. It does not necessarily follow that you will understand what I am saying and believe me, so the statement is made: “To everyone who sees the Son and believes…” Tonight I hope I can tell it so clearly that everyone can follow and understand what I say and accept it!

Jesus Christ is not a man! He is not a person, but God’s plan of redemption which must be discovered and understood. To enter this world one must wear a body of flesh and blood; yet we are told that flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. It takes a spiritual body to enter that kingdom and my words are spirit! If I tell you a story that many in this audience have experienced, and you accept it, you too will experience the truth that will set you free. No man can set you free. This man called Neville is simply an agent expressing truth. It is not good enough for you to just understand it. You must believe – not in Neville – but in the truth he is expressing from this platform and his books. If I lie and you believe what I say then you can’t prove it and will remain a slave. And oh, the pain that is promised to the teacher who dares to lie and mislead those who trust him. (Read it in the Book of James.)

I am telling you what I have experienced, so I can’t lie. Jesus Christ, God’s story of salvation, has been fulfilled in me. I have experienced the birth; the discovery of God who is David; the splitting of the temple which is one’s body, the ascent of the Son of man into heaven, and the descent of the dove. The majority of the people of the world will not accept my story, for they want a person on the outside as their personal savior. Tonight many who are facing their inevitable departure from this world are hoping to meet what they call their “savior,” but their savior is a plan of salvation who is God Himself!

When they ask you the question and insist on a Yes or No answer, ask them to come and reason with you in this manner: You believe in scripture? Let us turn to the 11th chapter of Matthew and read the story concerning John the Baptist. It is said of him: “Among those born of woman, none is greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Now let me ask you: Is Jesus Christ man of flesh and blood? Then he is not greater than John the Baptist. You don’t believe that? Well, it was Jesus Christ who made the statement: “No one born of women is greater than John the Baptist.” If you insist that Jesus Christ was born of woman and therefore in this world of flesh and blood, then he is not greater than John the Baptist. In fact, if you insist that Jesus Christ is a man of flesh and blood, and the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John, then is he not also greater than Jesus Christ?

God’s plan of salvation, is an entirely supernatural drama and hasn’t a thing to do with any child which came (or comes) from the womb of a woman. His story takes place in an entirely different area, for man comes out of his own skull. That’s the birth from above. There is a wonderful hiddenness of Christ in the 6th, 8th, 18th and 19th chapters of the Gospel of John.

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son? How can he now say: ‘I came down from heaven’? He is Joseph’s son in the eyes of hundreds of millions of people, but Jesus doesn’t make that confession. Rather he tells you: “I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me, and heaven is within.” How can Jesus be sent from heaven and be Joseph’s son if Joseph is a mortal man?

In the 8th chapter of John they ask him: “Who is your father?” and he replied: “You know neither me nor my Father, for if you knew me you would know my Father also.” In other words, if you know Christ in the true sense of the word, you wouldn’t ask because you would know that he is yourself. You would know: “My Father is he who you call God. I know my Father and you know not your God.” You will find the hiddenness of Christ all through the Book of John. And although it takes a man to express God’s plan, Christ cannot be seen by mortal eyes. He can only be known and experienced as the plan of salvation.

One who expressed the truth stood before Pilate, who said: “Who are you and where are you from?” And when he would not answer, Pilate said: “Do you not know I have the power to release you or to crucify you?” Then truth replied: “You have no power over me unless it is given you from above.” (This word translated “above” is “anothen” translated in the 3rd chapter of John as: “You must be born from above.”) His world is not this world, for did he not say: “I am not of this world”? The drama unfolds in an entirely different world and what I share with you is that which I have experienced in that other world.

Now, let me share an experience which was recently shared with me. The lady writes: “Last Sunday night I felt your presence so strong that I sat down expecting to see you. Instead all I saw were lights flickering on and off like fireflies. Then I went to bed and this is my dream. I was watching my tape recorder run, observing the tape move from one reel to the other, when I remembered that if I would arrest the activity I observed in my own mind, it would freeze. Immediately I stopped the activity in my imagination and the reel moved no more. I notice that the instant I did it, something in me opened and expanded; but I could not start the reel again until I contracted my senses. This fascinated me so I did it several times, each time realizing that I could not start the action in my open and expanded state. Only when I had contracted my senses once more would the reel start and move, seemingly independent of my perception of it. And when I awoke I was disappointed because I had not stopped and started people, but then I realized the significance of the symbolism of the dream and was elated once more.”

There is only God! God in the eternal state of existence! God in procession and God in return! Her experience of the night is a foreshadowing of her return to union with herself! Coming into the world she has played her part and is now tasting of the power everyone will exercise in the new age, a power completely unknown to man. Man is frightened by his own little devices, and thinks they can blast the universe apart; but they are only little firecrackers. You might have seen yesterday’s Los Angeles Times where the astrophysicists at Cal Tech
claim there are one hundred billion galaxies in our universe, with each galaxy containing one hundred billion stars; yet they can find nothing like our small little earth. The only thing in the universe that could cradle this biological experiment called Man is right here in our small planet – consisting of a sun and called Earth.

If you dwell upon this thought you should feel so great! The entire universe was created by an orgasm of God to produce this one little system! Have you ever seen the orgasm of a man under the microscope?

Billions of live organisms are there to attempt the likeness of the man, and only one is successful. Here is God’s orgasm, and one system comes out that can cradle his experiment to make man in his own image. There is nothing here that can do it! God had to die in order for man to live knowing “If I die I shall arise again and thou with me, for if God dieth not for man and gives himself eternally for man, man could not exist.”

When God became man he brought with him his plan of salvation, called Jesus Christ. The churches have organized and personified him. They have painted pictures of him and placed them on the wall, but that is not Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ is God’s eternal plan of salvation, which is expressed by a man. No one knows the authors of the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are anonymous names of men who related their own experiences. Personifying the Son, they call him Jesus Christ, but man not knowing this cannot discriminate between the state and its occupant, so he takes the state and worships it. Jesus Christ is God’s plan of salvation which unfolds in a man!

Now you will carry on when I am gone and you will be asked about him. When they ask you if you believe that a man called Jesus Christ was born of Mary, lived, and was crucified on a wooden cross, tell them the true story of salvation. You can, for you will be witnesses! You will have been born form above. You will have found David, who calls you Father. You will have been split in two, ascended into heaven, and witnessed the descent of the dove. When you have had all of these experiences you will be witnesses to the truth of God’s word. As a witness, you are the fruit of the tree of life upon which Jesus Christ (as God’s eternal plan) was crucified.

Men are looking for that tree in time and space, but Blake tells us: “The gods of the Earth and Sea sought through Nature to find this tree, but their search is all in vain; there grows one in the human brain.” That’s where Jesus Christ (God’s plan of salvation) is embedded. Engrafted there, it grows and erupts into these major events until the climax is reached, which is the descent of the dove. Then the man in whom the eruption has taken place will linger to tell of his experience and encourage his brothers. Then he will depart, not to be restored to this terrestrial world, but to enter that age called the kingdom of heaven, where he will exercise a power greater than the wildest dream of mortal man.

When God’s plan of salvation is complete, you have returned to yourself. That’s divine reunion. Then you will know from experience: “I came out from the consciousness of being the Father, and came into the world by being aware of its existence. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the awareness of being the Father.” Remember: there is only God the Father! This world is not some accident, but a plan to create and expand the creative power of God. There is no limit to your expansion, only a limit to contraction. Man is that limit. Taking on the limit of contraction and the opacity which is man, God unfolds himself in man to know unlimited translucency and expansion!

Jesus Christ is God’s plan of salvation. When you can see this clearly in your mind’s eye, you are seeing the Son of god, for God’s plan is his Son called Jesus Christ. If you reject this, you do not believe in yourself. The entire gospel of John tells about faith and lack of belief in self! John tells you a story about himself He is expressing truth and personifying it as a man and it’s the truth you should worship, not the man! John urges you to “Hold onto the truth, for the truth will set you free.”

If you accept the word of God that abides in you, you will know its truth and be set free. But if you say: “I want this wisdom, but if I could find out how he made his millions I would delay this for a while and come back tomorrow. I want the millions first,” I say to you: “O foolish one, your soul is required of you tonight. Tomorrow I will put you in a sphere where you will have your millions, but you will have to work for it.”
Don’t think that because you are now playing a noble part, you cannot move to an ignoble one. Just like an actor, you may play the part of a king on the stage of time and space tonight, and tomorrow be cast in the role of a clown. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” We are cast in role after role, until the work we asset out to do is completed in us. And regardless of what we do now, or our social or intellectual position, when we leave here we are cast in our appropriate roles. This I know from experience. Everything is done and everything is perfect. God planned everything as it has come to pass, and as it will be consummated.

So to you who are teaching now and to those who will follow, mark my words, you are going to be asked: “Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ as a man whose mother was Mary?” This is a question I have been asked all through my teaching years. Just before I closed last December a man took issue with me, for my words were in conflict with his concept of Jesus Christ. He had him as someone of flesh and blood on the outside and could not give up that concept. He has never returned, but that is the fulfillment of the 6th chapter of John, for when the people heard his words, they said: “These are hard sayings,” and they left, never to walk with him again. I am only fulfilling scripture. I tell the truth as I have experienced it and there will be those, like this gentleman, who will not walk with me again. He cannot walk with me while believing in a physical Jesus Christ, when my concept of him is the personification of truth, of God’s plan of salvation.

This truth must be expressed by man, so a man comes and expresses it. One must learn to leave the man alone and hold onto the truth, for the truth will then engraft itself you and unfold within you. Then you will know who Jesus Christ really is, because when he unfolds in you everything said of him is experienced by you. And when you read that David called God “My Father,” and David calls you “Father,” then are you not God? If it is said that God’s body was split from top to bottom, and it happens to you, are you not God? As these events happen, the whole Bible will open up, and you will see the wisdom of Blake when he said: “Rivers, mountains, cities, villages – all are you, for in eternity all are men.”

Scripture records that the Mount of Olives was split, but you will know that it was your own body that was divided. You will discover yourself to be the River Jordan, for there is nothing but Man. When you enter into the awareness of being the mountains, the villages, and the cities you will walk in their heavens and earth, for “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within you, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” All of the mountains of the scriptures are within you, as are the cities and the villages, regardless of their names. You become the Jerusalem, the bride who comes down at the dawn. Being God, individualized, you will personify God’s plan of salvation called Jesus Christ, for there is nothing but Man, and Man is God.

Now let us go into the silence.

neville goddard imagination creates reality

JUDAS THE REVEALER

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-2-1967

Judas, the one in scripture who is the most condemned, is the true revealer of Christ. We call him Judas, but Judas and Judah are one.

In biblical thought, a man’s name reveals his character. The full significance of the name is understood only when it is manifested in him who is the Word made flesh.
Tonight we will take the name “Judas” which is spelled “Yod He Vav Dalet He” [Ye-hu-da]. The Divine name “Lord” is “Yod He Vav He”, called “I AM”. So we have the Divine name, “I AM” with dalet inserted into it. Dalet, the fourth letter of Hebrew alphabet, carries the symbol of a door. So the central figure of the New Testament declares: “I AM the door.”

Judas is called the betrayer of the Lord Christ Jesus. The dictionary defines the word “betray” as “to reveal, to make known; or to deliver into the hands of the enemy.” Jesus Christ is called the Word of God, this Word is truth. So the one who reveals (betrays) the truth is Judas and those who do not understand recoil from his message. They are the enemy, although they know it not. Who could reveal the secret of God but God himself? Who could reveal your secret thoughts other than yourself? I could take you into my confidence regarding certain things in my life, but no one can ever know my thoughts but myself. So if anyone reveals Christ as the Lord it must be God himself. “He who dips with me into the dish.” Who could dip with me but myself?

The Word of God is planted in every being and all the blows of life stir and agitate the Word, causing it to take root and begin to unfold. Then the drama as first told in the Old Testament and explained in the New as the life of Jesus Christ, unfolds, and you – an individual – are cast in the starring role! You are that which is being revealed to yourself.

Now let me share an experience of mine that took place on the 10th day of October, 1966. I am in a room, say thirty feet square, teaching the Word of God to twelve men. We were all dressed in ancient robes and seated on the floor. Suddenly one man rose and quickly left the room. As he walked out the door I knew he was going to tell the authorities what he had heard. Then a tall, handsome man about forty years old and about 6’4″ in height, beautifully attired in costly robes, entered. We all rose and stood perfectly still as he walked in. Walking straight as an arrow to the end of the room, he turned at a right angle and walked to the end of the room, turned at a right angle and walked to the center, turned and approached me. Then he hammered a wooden peg into my shoulder and taking a sharp instrument, with one circular motion he severed the sleeve of my robe, pulled it off, and discarded it. Extending his arms to form the cross he embraced me, kissed me on the right side of my neck, as I kissed him on the right side of his neck. As we embraced and the scene began to fade, I saw the discarded sleeve. It was the bluest of blue.

Now let me turn to the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the 41st to the 45th verses. Imagination is speaking, saying: “The hour has come.” (You will notice that everything is on time.) “The hour has come; the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” Then the evangelist speaks of the one who enters, saying: “The betrayer has given them a sign that the one he shall kiss is the man, seize him and lead him out safely.” Then comes the finale, as the story of the betrayer is repeated, beginning with the words: “My hour has come.”

This true story unfolds in man, for every man has the Word buried in him. One day that Word will burst the seed and expand into the tree of life. Judas was not the one that departed to tell what he had heard. Judas is the revealer. No one knew who the betrayer was, only that he was to enter quickly, go straight to the one who is being revealed, and kiss him. Walking as fast as a soldier does on a rapid march, Judas embraced me, called me “Master,” and revealed me as the one in authority – fulfilling the 22nd and the 53rd chapters of Isaiah. Hammering the peg upon my shoulder, I was given complete authority over all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the world until the end, when the peg will fall and I am relieved of its burden.

The question is asked in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: “Who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” In this world the right arm is symbolized in the Mass, in that communion must be taken with the right, never the left hand. These fellows come down, clothed in their ecumenical costumes, with a cloth on their right arm. There was a Cardinal here who developed some kind of a clot in his right arm, and when they amputated it he was given special permission from the Pope to conduct the Mass with his left hand. All this is symbolism on this level, and on the higher level the sleeve is severed to reveal the arm of the Lord.

Now, “The hour has come when the son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” Who are the sinners? Those who recoil from the revelation of the truth that the human imagination is God! Tonight one billion who say they believe in Christ will recoil from the thought that their human imagination is God, and do not know they are sinners, enemies of the truth; for the true Christ is God’s power and wisdom housed in Man as his own wonderful human imagination. Those who do not accept the truth but see only its embodiment would destroy him, but he who recognized the personification of truth embraces him with extended arms.

The word “Judas” means “to celebrate; the hand of power, to revere; to worship with extended hand.” That is exactly what he did – he extended his hands to me. He was the celebrant conducting the Eucharist; putting into the shoulder that which would form the burden of Israel, he extended his arms, embraced me, and betrayed me with a kiss. Judas is he who reveals you to yourself! So, scriptural characters are known only as they are manifested in you who are the Word made flesh!

The whole vast world – misunderstanding the story – condemns the revealer, and anyone who reveals this truth is condemned. But Judas, the revealer of scriptural truth, is in you and when you arrive at a certain point, like a tree bearing fruit he will be made manifest. Judas is known in his full significance only when he is made manifest in you, the Man who is the Word made flesh.

Let me now share an experience of a lady who is tasting of the power of the age to come. She said: “One afternoon in May of 1965 I was lying on the floor with my eyes closed, claiming that I could get out of my body if I wanted to. Suddenly I am viewing a country scene, as a horse-drawn carriage appears to my left with two people in it. The road is unpaved, yet the dust does not stir. It is lined with trees in the act of motion, but not moving. Ladies in skirts to their ankles and men wearing period clothing were standing to my right, three abreast, all facing the carriage. Everything seemed to be in the process of motion, yet perfectly still. Then I intuitively knew that my presence made them inactive, and that when I left they would become animated again. Instantly I am back on the floor, and – knowing I was there only a second ago and completely awake and aware – I asked myself: ‘Where was I?’ and a voice within me answered: ‘Paris, 1778.'”

May I tell you: this world is a play. Like the first act of any play, nothing has passed away, but is reenacted over and over again. Man, totally unaware that the world is a play and the garments dated, animates a section of time until the buried Word of God hatches out and he is born from above. That Word housed in you must be born from above for you to inherit the kingdom of God. And when you do, you will discover this world which seems so alive, to be dead. Those who are having these experiences are tasting of the age to come, when one by one we are all united into a single being who is God.

One being buried himself in all! His buried self containing his plan of salvation is called the Word. Now, the words Judah, Judas, and Jew are one and the same in scripture and mean the creative hand of God. The word begins with the letter “Yod” meaning “hand”, then comes “He,” “Vav,” – and in the word “Judas,” a “Dalet” (a door) is added. Are we not told: “I am the door; anyone who enters by me is saved”? You can only come through the one door. It is through this door of awareness that he enters and embraces you. He betrays you by revealing you to yourself as the being upon whose shoulder the responsibility and authority of many are nailed.

Every one of us exercises the right to turn this wheel of recurrence, as we pass through the same scene over and over again. This lady saw a scene in the year 1778. I have entered scenes just as solid and real as this room, knowing that if I arrested an activity in my imagination everything will stand still. I have entered a restaurant and, observing people being served, I have arrested an activity within me and everything stills. Releasing it, everything continues as intended. The world is a play which has already been written. The players are merely actors on the stage, but getting carried away with the action you weep and laugh, for becoming involved in the emotions of the unfolding acts you do not realize it is only a play.

Imagination is buried in his predetermined play, from which he is born and dies over and over again until the Word buried with him awakens. That is God’s awakening and your extraction from the play, as told us in the Psalms: “To the Lord God belongs my redemption from death.” God doesn’t redeem you from the outside, for every character in scripture is in you! All things exist in the Human Imagination, which is the Divine Body!

The Word of God which was with God and is God, is the play. It takes experiences of this world to agitate it and get it in motion in order for God to awaken; and as he does, all the characters of scripture enter to play their part. Judas appears to betray the Son of man, yet the Son of man is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who is one with God. Judas reveals you – the Son of man – to be one with God the Father. Then he delivers you into the hands of the enemy, for you are compelled to tell your experience and those who hear it will recoil, for they know it is not so. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They attack because they do not know God’s revelation unfolds from within!

Test your own wonderful human imagination this night and believe in the reality of Christ, your creative power. Believe that all things are possible to him. Imagine the state you desire to express in this world, and as you go about your business you will see how quickly it will come to pass. Then one day scripture will unfold in you, casting you in the central role, but in the interval you are free to choose whatever you want to be or do.

Have you ever seen “Hamlet”? I have seen it maybe a dozen times as different actors play the part, and no two interpret Hamlet alike. Each differs in his interpretations, as is their privilege. And so it is with the part you are now playing. You can change it and play it differently if you desire, but you will not go outside of the framework of God, because his framework is within you. His play will unfold in you, for the outer part doesn’t really matter – it simply goes on forever.

The scene this lady saw in 1778 in Paris remains forever as a part of the play. When I shed this garment and it is burned, the garment is gone, but you cannot destroy the interval that it walked this earth. Someone will come upon a scene in this time slot, reanimate the character, and play the part or still it – as my friend did – and view the scene. This section of time never passes away, but the gospel, the Word of God, is buried in all who are present in the scene. And God’s Word will slowly unfold in you, as the immortal you cannot die. You cannot go into eternal death in that which cannot die, and your immortal self is the human imagination. I don’t care what you do to the body you wear. You can rub it out, dissolve it, or turn it into ashes – but it cannot die. I AM a God of the living, not the dead; and everything which appears to die does not, but remains forever and forever and forever.

Blake, in his “Visions of the Last Judgment,” said so beautifully: “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity independent of creation which was an act of mercy.” The world and all within it exists, but buried in the world is God himself. That was his act of mercy. And when he extracts himself from this bondage to decay, he expands beyond what he was when he buried himself in us!

In the 6th chapter of John, we are told that it is the will of our Father that of all he has given us nothing shall be lost, but will be raised up on the last day. What did God give us? Every character in scripture. And you will raise them all at the last day, because the infinite God is buried in you!

Take my words and dwell upon them, for I am telling you what I know from experience. I can see it all unfold in my mind’s eye. In my vision we were all seated on the floor when authority entered the door. “Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.” We rose and stood at attention as the symbol of authority moved across the room. Here was God Himself transferring power to the one he betrays by a kiss. The world has condemned a man called Judas, yet he is the eternal character who reveals God in man, to the man in whom God fell. So to go back to Blake: “Why stand we here trembling around calling on God for help and not ourselves in whom God dwells? Return to self in whom God dwells and scripture will unfold in you!”

When Pilate asked: “Where do you come from?” and Jesus did not reply, Pilate continued: “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?” Then Jesus said: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above; therefore he who delivered me into your hands has the greater sin.” This world is a play and you can do nothing, were it not part of the play created from above. In your blind state you think you have the power to release or crucify, but you can do nothing were it not given to you from within. You must be born from above to get that same power! Only then will you know the power to annex the play that is repeated over and over again, yet all taking place within.

From beginning to end, the story of scripture is true. Every word of it has been fulfilled in me, yet I am the same person I was as a child named Neville. My mother is just as dear to me, as is my father. They are gone from this world but not to me. My brothers, sister, and friends, my wife, my daughter and son are just as precious to me as they always were, so I am not a different person because of my experiences. I have experienced everything said of Jesus Christ in scripture, and yet there is no loss of identity.

I know from experience that Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination where all things exist. Buried in you, the human imagination unfolds as scripture fulfills itself in you. Not knowing you are human imagination, you imagine all kinds of things and cause the blows of life. Unwilling to apply your imagination, you – as the enemy of Christ – recoil from what I am telling you. You would rather go to church, light your candle at Mass, and think that’s enough. I have letters from people who believe that I who make this statement am a devil. But I know that one day they will awaken and everything they have done will be forgotten and never brought to mind again. They are doing and saying these things because they are struggling within themselves. Unable to believe that their own wonderful human imagination is God, they are the sinner who is missing the mark in life – the sinner Judas betrays Christ to.

Tell the sinners of the world that the cause of the phenomena of life is in them and they are going to resent it, for they cannot believe that God is in them as their own wonderful human imagination. They cannot believe that the only God so loved us He became us that we may be as He is. Unable to accept the truth, they will try to tear the revealer apart. That is why he was told to “Lead him away safely.” The violent simply leave your world. They depart because they cannot accept the truth.

When truth is revealed the majority will not believe it, as it is not what they are expecting. They are looking for some external God to deliver them, yet there is not any. Follow no external being – and that goes for all teachers, all Popes, all governments, all everything. The minute you believe someone external to yourself is your great leader he will enslave you, as told us in the first chapter of the Book of Samuel. Find God within you or you will never find him. And when you do, scripture will unfold in you! You will find yourself in a room, clothed in robes of the ancient world. Then Judas will appear and betray you with a kiss. But you aren’t going to be crucified. The crucifixion is over, there is only resurrection. One after the other all are being resurrected.

Now, in the New Testament Judas is the only suicide. Another is implied in the tenth chapter of John, where Jesus said: “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again, for I and the Father are one.” So no one can take your life from you, but Judas commits suicide, knowing “Unless I die thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me. Wouldst thou love one who had not died for thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And if God giveth not himself to Man, Man could not exist, so God died.” (William. Blake) Because God is his own Word, which is buried in all and contains his plan of salvation, he died and reached the limit of contraction that you might live. Revealing himself to himself in the state of Judas, he expands as the story of Jesus unfolds within you, the individual in whom the seed bursts.

Everyone will experience this same story and no one will be lost. You can’t lose Judas! The world thinks he was the son of perdition, as told us in the 17th chapter of John: “Of all that thou hast given me I have lost none but the son of perdition”; but the “son of perdition” means “the belief of loss.” I can move in time tonight to the year 2000 and see it taking place now, or I can go back to the year 1778 as my friend did, so I know nothing is lost. I also know that in this fabulous world of ours there is something in us that awakens and shows us that we are God the Father.

In the 17th chapter of John, God is addressed as “Holy Father,” saying: “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou gavest to me that they may be one as we are one.” Keep them in the name of Holy Father that they may be one as we are now one! The name Father is given to you not just as a name, but as an identity. When God’s only begotten Son calls you Father, your true Fatherhood is revealed. Then the same one that came to me will come to you. He will nail the peg upon your shoulder and sever your sleeve to reveal the arm of power. And you will say the words: “Who will believe my report” To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Then you will tell it because you cannot restrain the impulse.

“If I say I will not mention his name anymore, there is within me as it were a burning fire within my bones and I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.” I cannot restrain the impulse to talk about it while I still wear the garment of flesh, because I know it is the truth. So I tell it and some believe while others disbelieve. When it happens to you, don’t be surprised if no one in your family shows any interest in your experiences. They are simply not hungry for the Word of God. But the time will come when a hunger will come upon them, not for bread or water, but for hearing the Word of God. When the hunger comes the seed is about to burst, but until then they would rather have the orthodox concepts of God.

So Judas is the most maligned character in the New Testament. He was the only one who committed suicide there. In the Old Testament, Saul committed it as well as three others, yet none are condemned because the Lord himself said: “I take away my own life. No one takes it from me.” So in spite of what the churches teach there is no condemnation for suicide. In the beginning God committed it, saying: “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.” Committing suicide to become as you are, in the end you will commit suicide to be as He is!

Now let us go into the silence.

LIVE THE ANSWER NOW

December 22, 2013

Neville 01-15-1968

Every fact is a dream made visible, so I invite you to live as though your dream were already a fact! I am convinced that every dream (desire) I have dared to live in the now has gradually and unnoticed blossomed into fact in my life.

I also know, not only from personal experience but from eternal vision, that the spiritual states of the soul are eternal. That like a traveler, individual man passes through states but the states remain forever.

Without the help of any man or government you could lose everything you possess and become dependent upon society. All you need do is enter the state of poverty. Or again: without asking for help you could assume wealth by occupying the state. Remain faithful to it and you will discover that the state has its own way of externalizing itself. You must, however, give the desired state occupancy.

How do you occupy a state? By asking yourself how you would feel, what you would see, hear, touch, taste, and smell if your dream were real. Take time to set the stage. Being the star of your production, place yourself center stage, then allow a friend to enter and see you in your new state. Write the script – the words he would say when he sees you. Feel his touch.

Clothe yourself with the reality of the state you have just created in your imagination. You need not ask anyone’s permission or help, but moving into the new state in your imagination, simply remain there until you feel its reality. Then let the feeling go its way toward fulfillment.

A friend recently wrote, saying: “Not understanding why I read the Bible but never attend church, a friend brought a group of missionaries from the Mormon church to the house to convert me. Regretfully, I invited them in, and no matter what I said they would not listen. Rather, they expressed their own opinions and would not let me speak.

“That night – while reviewing my day – I thought of these people, and wondered how anyone could give such love, devotion, sincerity, time, energy, and money, to what I called `reverent baloney.’

“Dwelling upon that thought, I fell asleep and dreamed I was in a very strange and barren land, with craters everywhere. Hundreds of people were walking down a long roadway, leaving behind a girl, who was possessed by a screaming voice. Curious there, as I am here, I wanted to see the girl. When I saw her pity poured forth from me. I sat beside her, put my arms around her to offer sympathy, when suddenly the voice began to scream from within me. Then the girl arose, and walked away completely cured as I awoke.”

My friend was shown how discriminating one must become. The moment you contemplate something you become the very thing you behold. Entertaining a state in sympathy, my friend entered it. That night her heavenly Father taught her a great lesson. That no matter how awake one may be in this world, no one is exempt from falling into a state.

Blake understood this truth when he said: “From this I realize that neither the just nor the wicked are in a supreme state, but to be every one 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.” The serpent, the wisest of God’s creations, is the personification of God’s wisdom and power. It was he who told the woman: “You will not surely die, but will become as the gods, knowing good and evil.”

Entering a world of death, you will seem to die to those who cannot follow you – but not to yourself. Instead, you are restored to an unaccountably young body. You may leave an old body with missing hair and teeth, to find yourself in a healthy, new body with your hair and teeth intact. This I know to be true, for my vision is open and I have seen those who have departed this life. I know they are not gone, but are restored to wear a new, young, and healthy body.

Now, a state may be entered either deliberately or unknowingly, but you are going to become what you contemplate. The world’s wise men believe we are heading for the end, but its climax has already occurred. While on the cross, these words were spoken: “It is finished.” This age has already ended and an entirely new and different age – into which we are all moving – has begun.

To Blake, space was a woman, while everything in it was Man, and Man was God. Blake saw the world as a play of six thousand years, with a door opening to Eden every two hundred years. We think we are moving in one direction, yet everything is taking place now, and every two hundred years an individual can enter the New Age.

Let me now tell you of a vision the lady had, who shared the dream of the screaming girl. One night as she was mentally reviewing her day, a long table appeared before her inner eye. A judge, robed in black and wearing a white wig, was sitting at one end holding a gavel. Looking directly at her, the judge raised his gavel, lowered it to the table and proclaimed: “The incurrent eyewitness.”

The word incurrent means giving passage to a current that flows inward, such as a sponge when placed in water. This lady has been conditioned by Divine Providence to receive spiritual communion. Whether she likes it or not she will be compelled to receive it, for she is already awake! She will bring back vision after vision paralleling scripture, for scripture only records finished history.

Blake described the Bible as: “The Divine written law of Horeb and Sinai,” which is the Old Testament. “And such the Holy Gospel of Mount Olivet and Calvary,” which is the New Testament.

Every conceivable part that Man could play is openly described in the Old Testament, for each individual recorded there represents a state of this age. The New Testament describes the entrance into the New Age. It reads as though it happened to one person, as a biography; but the New Testament records states which unfold in the individual.

Blake’s poem, “Little Boy Lost,” records a true revelation:

“Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible for thought
Greater than itself to know.
And Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?”

When the priest heard this, he took the little boy by the hair, and screamed: “What a fiend is here!” Then he burned the little boy, as he had burned others before.

The little boy spoken of here is everyone in this world. I know, for it is impossible to transcend a thinking being. Therefore, it is impossible for a thinking being to know a thought greater than self.

If God – the creator of all life – wants to be known and loved by you, He must become you, for He cannot discover any other than Self. That is why it was necessary for God to become as you are – that you may be as He is; for if God did not become you, you could never know Him.

Being a thinking being, you are unable to know a thought greater than yourself; for God – the Father of all life – became individualized in order for you to discover that you are He. And because God is a Father, he must have a child. Therefore, one day God’s son, David, will call you Father and your true identity will be revealed. There is no other way to discover your Fatherhood.

I urge you to dream nobly. Although your dream may seem impossible, invite it into your consciousness by feeling it is real. Wear this feeling as you would a suit of clothes, and persist until the feeling takes on the tones of reality. Do that, and in a way no one knows, your desire will appear as an eruption of your continuous thought.

Your desire started in motion when you wore it. Its appearance is simply a hidden continuity which came to the surface. Dwell upon a thought, and you will realize that it is not original. That the thought itself is complete and therefore every thought is Divine plagiarism!

Enter a mood and watch the thoughts that come to you while there. If you want to be known, get into the mood by feeling recognized as you move about. Then as the feeling becomes familiar you will be amazed how things will reshuffle themselves and you will get the publicity you desire. It may not be very flattering, but if you really want to be known, you will be.

“Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” Knowing what you want, assume you have it and let no one divert you. Do your father’s will, believing in the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Try it, for this simple principle will not fail you. But remember: you are its power, as it does not operate itself. I can tell you how to move into another state, but you must move into it. No one can do it for you. You see, states are permanent and it is up to you to get out of the state you are now in if it is undesirable to you.

One day a lady in New York City came to see me regarding her stomach problems. While she was there we talked of higher things, and after the silence she returned to her home on Staten Island. Arriving there, she went into a favorite German restaurant and ate all the food she hadn’t been able to eat in years, with no ill effects. I didn’t give this lady any pills. I don’t even know what a stomach looks like! I simply got this lady to move from the state that had the bad stomach!

Leave the state containing poverty and move into the state containing wealth, and wealth will take on reality. This room has reality and substance because you are thinking from it. Think of a room, however, and it is but a shadow. Think of a state and it seems a mere possibility. But enter it by thinking from the state, and it is the only reality. Blake said: “If the spectator could only enter into the image in his Imagination; if he could make a friend and companion of his image, he would rise from the grave and meet the Lord in the heavens.”

Now, buried in a state, you are a spectator of other states. But if you will rise from your present state and bury yourself in another, you will express it. If you can be what you want to be, why not become it? Why sit in a state you dislike and argue, when you can move into another state in your imagination? But once you have moved into the state of your fulfilled desire, don’t be like Lot’s wife. Don’t look back at your former state and preserve it, for salt is a preservative.

Every character in the Bible is a state of consciousness that you, an individual, will pass through, for you are immortal. Having descended into a world of death, you pass through states; but you cannot die. Blake tells us: “The oak is cut down by the ax and the lamb is stayed by the knife, but their forms eternal remain forever.

Step out of this garment and you will instantly step into another. Ninety per cent of those who leave are totally unaware of what has happened. Observing their passage, we think they have died, but they do not die to themselves. They do not even recognize the change, any more than you do when you are asleep. The moment you become aware that you are dreaming, you wake up. But if you do not awaken it is because you have passed through the gate we call death, to continue your dream.

In your night dream you take everything for granted – until you begin to become aware that you are dreaming. If you find yourself waking, try to grab a solid object, like a post – but not an animal, no matter how tame he appears to be. Hold the object and will yourself to wake up, and you will awaken in your dream to find yourself in a world which is just as real as this one.

When this happens don’t get panicky, as you will come back. Instead, if you have any red blood in you investigate the world you find yourself in, and you will discover the people there are just as stupid, just as ambitious, and just as sound asleep as they are here. I have been shut out of this world many times, to return to find this body cataleptic for maybe twenty or twenty-five seconds before I could animate it again. If sometime I do not get back, the doctors will cut up the body to see why I died. They will come to some conclusion; but if they are honest with themselves, they will know that there was no physical reason for my death. I simply left and did not return.

But while you are here, why not live well? I think we will all agree that it is easier living when we have wealth than when we are poor. I have no desire to have lots of things, but if anything can be mine by the simple act of assumption, why not assume it? No power on earth can stop you from imagining. The morning paper records what happened, but they do not tell you the cause. Who knows who is dreaming what is happening today?

Two years ago I watched the Kentucky Derby on television. Willie Shoemaker was riding a horse which was favored to win. The night before the race, the owner of the horse had a dream in which he saw Shoemaker – leading by lengths – misjudge the finish line and ride the saddle to ease the horse too soon.

That is exactly what happened. Shoemaker, a truly great jockey, misjudged the finish line, then – realizing his mistake – he could not get enough energy again to win the race and therefore lost it. But who controlled Shoemaker’s behavior? The owner told Shoemaker the dream before the race and he listened attentively; then, in the physical event, he couldn’t do anything about it. Shoemaker took the brunt. He was condemned and received his sentence, which was a financial loss to him; but Shoemaker didn’t have the dream – the owner of the horse did!

You do not have to have a dream of the night to influence the behavior of others. You can dream during the day and influence them, as everyone is contained within you. “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) If everyone is contained within you, you do not need their permission to be used to externalize your dream! The owner used the horse, the jockey and everyone who bet on the event, to externalize his dream. He entered the state unknowingly but couldn’t escape its effect. He lost the race in the same manner in which he had envisioned it.

You can sit quietly and enter a glorious dream. If it’s shadowy, you are not in it. Persist until you enter it, and it will become the only reality. Live in the state of your fulfilled desire now, knowing that in a way unknown and unnoticed by you it will erupt to become an objective fact.

Take the challenge of scripture: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” Dare to believe you have what reason and your senses deny. Persist in your assumption and it will harden into fact. Try it and see! And remember: the Father who became you is speaking to you through the medium of dream and revealing himself in vision, for this world is His play!

One day you will leave this play, knowing you are God the Father who conceived it all. Beginning as the one God, we fell as the gods. But we will return to the one God, for it takes all of us to form the Lord. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, is one Lord.”

Take the challenge of scripture and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled – not only for yourself, but for your family and friends. When you imagine for another, you are really giving it to yourself, as there is no other. The whole vast world is only yourself pushed out.

Now let us go into the silence.

LOVE ENDURETH

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard

Tonight’s subject is “Love Endureth”

We are told, “He who has not loved does not know God, for God is love.” This is not a conclusion that the prophet reached after years of philosophic study, but an act of God in self-revelation. If God never revealed himself to man, I doubt that man would ever know that God is love. But, in spite of all the horror of the world, I know from experience that God is love.

The apostle Paul tells us, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” Then he takes all the symbols of God and compares them to love. You could have all the wisdom of the world, all the power of the world, but if love is not present, your worldly power and wisdom is as nothing. There is no gift of the spirit comparable to love, and in the end love is the only thing that is alive. Faith will be fulfilled; hope will be realized. These are attributes of God, but love is not an attribute of God, God is love. When you stand in the presence of the Risen Christ you have only one emotion, only one feeling and that is love. And when love embraces you, you wear the body of the Risen Christ, the body of love. Everything in this world will pass away, but love will endure forever. So “He who does not love does not know God for God is love.”

Tonight, what I am about to tell you may seem incredible, but it is all scripture and all true. We are told, “Be persistent in the race, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and protector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame.” This is true, for I remember when he nailed himself on this body (this cross he now wears). He despised the shame, for he knew what he must experience before he committed the act. But he did it for your sake. Now you may wonder if there is any hope, any chance for his return. There is. Listen to his words, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” May I tell you these statements are to be taken literally and fulfilled literally, although I know it doesn’t make sense on this level. That is why Myers, in his lovely poem “St. Paul” said:

“Oh could I tell he surely would believe it. Oh could I only say what I have seen. How can I? Or who will believe it? How, until he brings you to where I have been.”

Although it sounds terrible to think of drinking anyone’s blood, when he brings you to where I have been you will actually see God’s living, pulsing, golden liquid blood and say to yourself, “I know it is myself, Oh my divine creator and redeemer.” Then you will fuse with it and, absorbing it like a sponge, up you will go on the spiral stairway into the kingdom of heaven. That is your last day. And the last day comes to the individual every moment in time. It has already happened and it is still, in a sense, happening and will continue to happen until all are saved. Until everyone is redeemed, for God is redeeming himself.

Last summer, while visiting in New York City, I wanted to visit a bookstore I knew well and had visited regularly while living in New York City. I had purchased many books from Mary. She did not carry my books. In fact I doubt if she ever knew I wrote one. The lady was not interested in what the books contained, only in the profit they would provide. Whenever she noticed I was looking at a book, the moment I put it back on the shelf she removed it and changed the price. I know, for I have seen her do it. When I told a friend that I was going to the bookstore he said, “Haven’t you heard? Mary was killed last month and there is no more metaphysical library.”

Now, this lady and her husband had gone their separate ways, yet had remained married. One evening, taking only her change purse with her, Mary had gone to the grocery store and was on her way home when she was knocked down by a passing car and killed. Since there was no identification on her person, no next of kin had been notified. Five days later her husband stopped by the shop only to discover it was closed with unopened mail still on the floor. When he went to the police to file a missing person’s notice, they suggested he contact the morgue where he identified her body. Not for one moment could I arrest her attention as

I have yours now. She made a considerable amount of money out of me. That was all she wanted, yet over the years she had many an opportunity to hear from one who had experienced scripture, but she wasn’t interested at all.

We are told that, at the end of his days Paul expounded to them from morning till night about Jesus, trying to persuade all who would listen to him using both the Law of Moses and the prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved. Mary never gave me the chance to convince her, but I tell you that everything said in that book called the Bible is literally true and will one day be experienced by you and fulfilled by you literally, even to the drinking of the blood.

You will recognize the blood of God as that which gave you life while you walked the earth. And “He who drinks my blood has life in himself.” “Because I live, you will live also.” See the difference in tense? Because I live… that’s present… you will live also. He is addressing the spiritual you. You who seem to be alive, but are really not until you drink my blood. I have animated you, for I have placed my blood within you. “Unless I die thou canst not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” God died and his blood is in you and God is love.

So I tell you, Love Endureth. It was love who began a good work in you and it is love that will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. Love is the ultimate reality. If the word “Jesus” offends you, use “love”. Love said, “Let not your hearts be troubled for I am the way, and the truth and the life.” That’s perfectly alright. Change the word “Jesus” to “love”, for Jesus is love, infinite love.

I want to thank you for sharing your visions as they come to you and I will use them as they apply to the topic I have chosen. One I can use tonight. This lady said, “In my dream I was looking for something, yet I didn’t know what it was I was to find. Then I discovered three coins in my left hand. Looking at them I said, ‘Shouldn’t there be thirty pieces of silver?’ and a voice answered saying, ‘No, you have three precious ones.’ A hand then reached out and removed a coin as the voice said, ‘This is faith.’ Removing the second it said, ‘This is hope’ and as the last one was removed it said, ‘This is love.’ Then I awoke.”

Here is the fulfillment of the 13th chapter of Corinthians, “Faith, hope and love, these three abide, but the greatest of these is love.” Faith will one day be transformed into vision and will, therefore, fulfill itself. Hope will be completely realized in this state, but God is love and therefore the greatest of these. She held the three precious ones in her hand and the voice began to speak. And whenever vision breaks forth into speech the presence of deity is affirmed, as told us in the 3rd of Exodus and the 6th of Isaiah.

I tell you, one day you will experience every word of scripture. Night after night scripture fulfills itself in me, like the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my Shepard. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” Could you believe that psalm could be literally true? It is. During the last few years in New York City we were warned not to walk in the park, as there were muggers day and night. Regardless of these warnings, one day I felt an urge to go for a walk in the park. It had rained a great deal that spring, and I can’t tell you my thrill as I walked through the park and enjoyed the green, green grass. The following night I am with my earthly father. Although he died when he was 85, this night he appeared to be about 30. We were lying in this beautiful green grass, talking to each other. Then I said, “Would you believe it, only yesterday I dreamed that I saw this grass and remarked to myself how green it was, and now it is an objective reality.”

In my dream the grass was no longer subjective, but objectively real. So what is objective and what is subjective? Is it not wholly determined by the consciousness from which it is spoken? In a dream I am telling my father that this is a reality, and what I experienced only yesterday was the dream. Which was the fact and which was the reality? And who is my father? Christ tells us, “I am the Father. He who sees me has seen the Father.” The whole vast world is seeking Christ. They are seeking the authority whose image is an earthly father. Seeking a creature of authority, a power said to be Christ, said to be better than, that they can submit themselves to. But the power being sought can only be found within. So when I met my father, I met the image and symbol of the authority I love. I have always loved my father. I would always submit myself to him and he was always generous and kind. So here I am stretched out on the grass with my father in complete fulfillment of the 23rd Psalm. “He made me to lie down in green pastures.” Who did? The Lord, he who calls himself my Father.

Night after night scripture unfolds within me and I experience it in a first person, present tense experience. But how to tell you until he brings you to where I have been. And he will bring you to that same level, and then you will know that everything said in scripture is fulfilled, literally.

So I tell you God, who is love, endures. Everything is going to pass away. It will simply pass from the earth, but Love Endureth forever. Everything else is an attribute of God. Faith will be fulfilled, hope will be fulfilled, they are all attributes, but God, who is love, endures forever.

I can’t tell you my thrill when someone who comes here has a vision of that nature. Her story has gone out, tonight, and you who have heard it will have the same experience. You will have the three coins, the coin of faith, the coin of hope and the coin of love. And the last shall become first, and the first, last, for the last was love. These are the three priceless ones. Not the thirty pieces of silver, for that is the price you pay to the owner of the ox who gores another. The ox is the symbol of Christ, he who comes not to bring peace, but a sword, an ox-gore. And when that happens thirty pieces of silver is given the owner.

But she has the three precious ones. She has the answer, for when you stand before the Risen Christ the question is asked, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” And you answer, “Faith, hope and love.” Then you will add, “But the greatest of these is love,” for when Christ embraces you, you become one with the body of love forever. Now that you and God are one, no man, or organization of men can put you asunder. You are one with the body of love. And when you leave this sphere you awaken as the being the world is talking about.

But while you are here, on this level, your true being is veiled in flesh and no one can see the body you wear. But, knowing who you are, you know that you can appropriate anything you desire with no concern as to how you are going to get it. An abundance is yours, just for the taking. You know that “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; if I were hungry I would slay and eat.” Why tell anyone of your hunger if the world is yours? Well, you have a world that is infinite, that is unspoiled, that is eternal. That is the world of love, which you are. And you will know it when you are embraced and become consciously one with the body of love. And in that resurrected world you know every desire is already fulfilled.

But there can be no resurrection without crucifixion, for how can there be a resurrection without death? So God dies, for “Unless I die, thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” You will not rise as two, but as one, yet there is no change of identity, no change of your wonderful individuality. It’s the same self, but now includes a far greater awareness than before, a self who is none other than God the Father. Without change in identity, you become this infinite being who is Jesus Christ, and in the end there is nothing but Jesus, and you are He.

So I tell you, everything will pass away, but love endures forever as told us in the 13th chapter of I Corinthians. Someone once defined the words Faith, Hope and Love as:

“Faith is believing what is incredible Hope is hoping when all things are hopeless, and Love is forgiving what is unforgivable.”

The world teaches that another is love and completely unattainable, but I tell you that though your sins are as scarlet, when you are embraced by love, they shall be as white as snow. I have done everything that a man is capable of doing, but when I was embraced by love everything that I had done up to that point became as white as snow. No one on earth can save you. You are saved by the grace of God and since it’s not your own doing, there is no way you can boast.

Tonight I ask you to imitate God as dear children. In the first epistle of John, the fourth verse, we read, “We love, because he first loved us.” Our love is only a response, because he loved us first. Now make it a personal “I” and say, “I love because God first loved me” and imitate him as a dear child. If I want the response of love and expect it to come from another, I will wait in vain. But if I imitate God, he (or she) will love me because I first loved him (or her). And when he says, “I live, therefore you will live also,” it is because I live. Just as in the story of Pygmalion and Galatea. The great artist created an image out of marble and fell in love with his image. Then he prayed to the goddess of love to endow it with life. When this was done the statue became a beautiful woman and the first word she uttered was the name Pygmalion. The first word you and I ever uttered was Jesus’ name, for before we could ever utter a word we had to be aware of being, and that is saying I AM.

God, the great artist, created you and falling in love with his creation he gave it the gift of life by giving you the gift of himself and God is love. Greater love has no man than this. Tonight fall in love as God. Imitate him as a dear child. Love any state so much you die to any other. Live there, as God, and you will live there as man also. Fulfill every desire of your heart, for in time it will all pass away. And always remember who you are, for you are love, the one and only reality of the world, and that, which endureth forever.

Now let us go into the Silence.

MOSES – ELIJAH – JESUS

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 2-15-1963

In Biblical language a man’s name reveals his character. His name is an expression of this essential nature of the bearer. As I have said in the past, these characters are not persons; they are eternal states, spiritual states, through which the immortal soul passes to awaken as God.

To understand tonight’s subject let us go back just for a moment. As you know, I have told you the Bible is God’s plan, something to be understood only through revelation. It is revealed, it is true, but seems the most impossible thing in the world, but will prove itself true in time.

The book of Genesis is the seed plot. As you remember it is the beginning: “In the beginning God” and the book ended on the note: “In a coffin in Egypt.” The one in the coffin was called Joseph. Joseph is human imagination – it is of one tissue with divine imagination, but here it is human imagination, placed in a coffin. He extracted a promise from his brothers that they will not leave his body in Egypt; they will take it up to the land that was promised by God to his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is the end of the book, the seed plot of the Bible. Then we start for the unfoldment of the seed that was planted in the book of Genesis.

The next book is Exodus. That is where Moses comes in for the first time in the Bible. Now, we are told that Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses floating on the river and she named him Moses, because she drew him out of the water. I will not deny that – that is part of the name, Moses,” to draw out, to rescue, to fetch”. But it has another meaning. She was an Egyptian and the boy was raised in the courts of Pharaoh, and the word “Moses” is the root of the Egyptian word (verb) “to be born”. That is what it means – to be born. Something is now to be born and he is buried in man in the book of Genesis. It is completely contained in this ark, in this coffin or man, but now it must be awakened, it must be born. We are told he did not volunteer for the task -he was drafted.

Now let me stop here and tell you: this is not a man as you are, as I am; this is a state of consciousness. All these characters are states of consciousness, and so Moses is playing the part now, leading you – leading me, everyone in the world – out of the state known as Egypt, taking us out of Egypt into the promised land. Moses is true in this sense: in him – in germinal form – is the entire future of Israel. All the visions you read concerning him are contained in us. He was prophet, priest, law giver, shadow of the king (or a foreshadowing of the king), victor, exile, fugitive, man of God – all of these are stated in the state called Moses. Now he is leading us out.

Let us see what he has in common with the other characters named in tonight’s subject, Elijah and Jesus. No one knows the burial place of Moses, as we are told in the very last book of the five, called Deuteronomy. Moses died and he was buried. Who buried him? The Lord buried him, and to this day no one in Israel knows the burial place of Moses. (Deuteronomy 34) We are told that Elijah – the word Elijah means “My God is Jehovah” – while talking to his disciples, they are parted by this fiery chariot and fiery horses, and he was lifted up into heaven by a whirlwind. Therefore no one knows his burial place, because he wasn’t buried – he was transported.

We are told of Jesus that when they came early in the morning and they found the stone rolled away, that his body had been removed, and to this day no one knows where they laid the body: “Where have they laid the body of my Lord?” So, here we find in the end there were three – each had the same exit from this world. Here is a progression leading up toward God. Moses means, “to be born”. In Hebrew it means, “to draw out”. Yes, something is being drawn out, something must be born. Elijah is “my God is Jehovah”. And Jesus, “Jehovah, is savior”, in keeping with the statement in Isaiah 43: 3,7,11: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

If you read it on the surface it will mean nothing to you, but we go back to find what was the great revelation, as Israel is being moved out in the exodus from Egypt. It took forty years, and forty is the numerical value of the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, whose symbol is a womb – something to be born, something is coming out of the womb in so-called forty years. It doesn’t mean forty years as you and I measure time, but something is coming out of man, and everything that is coming out is God, moving to the second stage called Elijah, and flowering in its fullness in Christ Jesus.

Moses is the first to have the name of God revealed to him. There are many names for God, but never before was it revealed as it was to him – that state – and you are in it now, I am in it. And the name revealed of God the creator is “I AM”. (Exodus 3:13-15) “When I go to the people of Israel and tell them that the God of their fathers sent me. The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and they ask me, ‘What is his name? What shall I say?’ The voice answered, ‘I AM that I AM.’ Say unto them ‘I Am hath sent you.'” It was never revealed before that that was the name of God.

We are told in Psalm 9:10: “And those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” If you know the name! You and I have heard the name, but if you really know it, you will put your trust in the name, and I tell you the name is “I AM”. It’s not John, it is not Jesus, it’s not God, it’s not Lord – it’s nothing outside of “I AM”. The word translated “Lord”, (which is Jehovah) means, “I AM”. When I say I am the Lord thy God, I really should say – if you really want to understand it – “I AM that I AM”, your creator.” For the word now translated “God” is the word “Elohim”, the word used in the first chapter of Genesis: “And God said” (that is, “Elohim” – a plural word): “Let us make man in our image.”

When you read the words in the sentence: “I am the Lord thy God”, the word “I AM” is the same word translated [as] “Lord”. So, I AM that I AM, the God who created you in his image, and beside me there is no other God, no other creator, no other savior. That is what was revealed in the state known as Moses. If you take the name of Moses, men-shin-he, – and if you turn it backwards it spells “name”, “shem.” (The common word for name in Hebrew is “shem”.) If I take the middle letter out [of “Moses”], which is a “shin” and put it first of the three little letters shin-mem-he, it spells “heaven” [correctly: sham-may-im]. So, here the name means so much.

I call everything out, born and reborn, to bring all things within me that are to be born, and I do it in his name. I am drawing it out of myself – that is Moses – Moshe. I turn the name around: I do it in his name (“shem”). And where do I draw it from? Shin-mem-he, [pron. “sham-mah”] out of heaven [lit. “from there.”] And where is heaven? Heaven is within you. Out of my own being I am drawing everything, but I draw it in his name. There is no other name under the sun by which this is done. And so, how do I draw anything? I draw it only in his name. We are told he draws it all out – but he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven – the promised land, called Canaan.

The one who will take the Israelites in is Joshua. The word “Joshua” is the identical word as Jesus, spelled the same way. He cannot go in; he is only the power that draws it out – Jesus does, whose name is Joshua. Before we reach that state called Joshua (which is Jesus), we pass through the state of Elijah. The word Elijah, “my God is Jehovah.” If I say my God is Jehovah, I think in terms of some external Lord. If I say “My God is I AM” then you might think me arrogant, think me blasphemous, yet that is exactly what the word means.

His story is told us in the Book of Kings. In the Book of Kings there is nothing but sheer unadulterated power. When a man feels it and knows what he can do, untempered by love, he does everything. That is what Elijah did. He called down the fire and destroyed the sacrificial bull, turning it to ash. Destroyed the children who criticized him and then the 450 prophets of Baal who could not bring down any fire; he did in the twinkle of an eye. He ordered the destruction of all the prophets of Baal. Violence in the extreme. Then we move from this state to the Joshua (which is Jesus) where the same power – infinite power – is tempered with love.

Let me give you my own personal experience concerning these states. When you meet these states they are personified as men. Thirty odd years ago I was taken in the spirit into a divine council, a divine society, and the first one to meet me was the embodiment of infinite might. He was seated (and the symbolism is perfect) in a chariot, and hitched to this chariot was this perfectly marvelous pair of beautifully harnessed horses, and seated in the chariot was infinite might – eyes of steel, not an nth part of love came from that face to mine. As he thought, I heard what he thought. He looked at me eye to eye, but no emotion of feeling concerning love or mercy or tenderness came from his eye to mine – just sheer might, sheer power. No power on earth can compare to the embodiment of that power.

And just as we are told: “When he ascended in his fiery chariot leaving no trace behind…” It seems such a stupid statement to make, that not a thing on earth could lead one to believe that it could be literally true. And yet, my mystical experience confirms the truth of that statement, for there is the perfect embodiment of the chariot and the horses, beautifully harnessed, and the charioteer is Elijah himself -infinite power. The horse is always the symbol of the mind; in this case the mind is harnessed, disciplined, and directed by the charioteer, the one who is in control of that disciplined mind, but no feeling, no emotion of love.

Then I was taken into the presence of infinite love, infinite mercy, and here I stood in the presence of Christ Jesus – a state, yes, a living state – and talked and communed with him. He asked me: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” And I answered in the words of Paul: “Faith, hope and love, these three abide, but the greatest of those is love.” At that moment he embraced me and I became one with infinite love. I have never known such joy in my life, never known such peace and mercy, such anything concerning these attributes. While in this embrace came this voice out of space, and I found myself once more in the presence of infinite might – and he is called Elijah. Another name for him in the Bible is Elias, God Almighty. No mercy there as yet, no love, just sheer power, and it was he who sent me back to where I am today with the command: “Time to act.”

All this was done in the state of Moses, that state that I entered not voluntarily; I was drafted, as I was drafted into God’s army without my permission, my consent, for a purpose: to lead me out of Egypt into the promised land. But I have to pass through these states. Everyone passes through these states. So, Moses is the mediator, the state of all the things that happen to him, and he in turn then shares with those for whom it happened. And so, it happened to me, that state of Moses. Then I in turn prepare to share with you the things that happened to me, for they happened because of you, to tell you it is all true.

You say: “A little handful like this and three billion of us in the world?” It doesn’t matter if only one came and heard of God’s word and the truth of that word; it would be infinitely greater than the three billion who didn’t hear of it. For we enter the kingdom of God one by one. We do not enter in pairs. I can’t take the dearest soul in this world to me with me into that state. We have to go alone, singly. We are known singly and loved singly and no two can go together. So, it doesn’t matter if I speak to a hundred or to one, or speak across the nation on radio to two million – it makes no difference. Do they believe it? The story is: “Tell the story as you experienced it, in the hope, yes, that they will believe it.” But no one has any assurance that it will be believed, but only as it is believed and accepted by the individual do we start the journey out of Egypt. Egypt is not in the Near East; you are Egypt.

Joseph – which is your own wonderful human imagination – is buried in Egypt, (the body). He contains within himself the whole vast world, and now it has to be led out. It is led out by the true revelation of the true name of God. In the fifty chapters of Genesis the word is not revealed, not used, and then comes the revelation of the 3rd and 6th chapters of Exodus: “Go and tell them ‘I AM’ sent you.” All through the entire book, when you read this strange translation, “I AM the Lord” is simply “I AM the I AM.” Why take the second “I AM” and then call it ‘Lord”? The average person reading it can’t quite understand it, but the identical words that begin the sentence: “I AM”, which is Yod He Vau He [pron. Yod Hey Vav Hey] is the word that comes just two words removed: “The Lord” – “I AM the I AM”, your God and besides the “I AM” there is no God. I AM your maker, therefore you are really self-begotten in the true sense of the word.

So, these are three fantastic states through which man moves, and the day will come when you, too, will be taken by a whirlwind into heaven and you will be brought into the presence of a state; but to you it is something completely independent of your perception of it. When you look at him he is a power, I mean a power beyond the wildest dream of man – and it is man. I could paint a picture for you, could I draw. I can see him so clearly and it was thirty-odd years ago. More vividly than anything that happened to me – today it is so indelibly impressed upon my mind – and yet it is a state called Elijah. And one passes through that state where it is nothing but sheer might.

You see it in the world today. It could be economic power, where there is no feeling whatsoever but simply to get a new power. It could be a military power, social power, intellectual power, or any other kind of power, without feeling or compassion, just sheer might. We see it describing the world in the morning paper. Not a bulletin on the radio or TV that doesn’t describe this sheer might. If I can get the better of that nation or nations without feeling it doesn’t matter – that’s Elijah. Read this story in the Book of Kings, where it passes from that to God himself, and that is Christ Jesus.

When you stand in his presence, again he is no other than you. He communes with you, he asks you questions and you answer the question, and he embraces you and it all seems so much the two of you – and yet you are told in Zechariah 14:7: “His name is one.” He seems to be another, he embraces you, but at that moment of the embrace you become one and the Lord – the “I AM” – is one and “His name is one.” Then you find yourself fused with God himself and there aren’t two of you – not you and God – you are the very being that you have been seeking, you are he.

And then comes the sentence to recall all the means to be sent, for you are called and then sent to reveal all that has happened to you, in the hope that those who hear it will accept it. We are told many rejected it and many accepted it. That is how it is all singled out. Eventually all will accept it. It is a form of preparation leading up towards the fulfillment of his purpose, which is to give himself to us. For it is God’s purpose to give himself to you individually, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you.

And because God is one and his name is one, there can’t be God and you. For you stand in his presence as you answer the questions. You will – you’ll answer it automatically: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” You say “love”. Then you are embraced by love himself and you aren’t you and love – you are love. You are the embodiment of love and you never felt such mercy, such compassion, such love, and you are one with it, but there aren’t two of you, you are God. And while in the very embodied state of infinite love, you are sent – sent to do what you will be doing right in this world, because everyone must be led out of Egypt. “Bring my people out of Egypt,” even though I will harden the heart of Pharaoh and keep them back in Egypt, I will still tell you to bring them out of Egypt.

If the heart is hardened because of what we have to say (because in this audience we are Christians and Jews, undoubtedly all of us) there may be one who does not call himself a Christian or a Jew, who thinks I am neither -I’m an agnostic, or I’m an atheist, or maybe I’m some other creed. But I would say that on a whole as I go across the country I speak to hundreds of Christians and Jews.

The word “Moses” to the Jew is a sacred name, the one who was a leader, chosen by God to lead his chosen people out of Egypt into the promised land. And Elijah, the great prophet. To the Christian, what more sacred name than the name of Christ Jesus? I tell you these are infinite states, eternal states, through which the immortal soul passes, and he awakens in the very end and is confronted by God himself, the Ancient of Days. Then you will know.

On the Mount of Transfiguration these were the three who appeared. There was Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. “They all shone until their faces were like the sun.” That is true. We are told that when Moses came down from the mountain, they all were afraid because he shone so, and he covered himself with a veil so he could talk to the people while he was veiled. The veil is the human body. This garment is the veil to talk to man, for if you saw him unveiled you couldn’t stand the light. But when he went into the presence of God he took off the veil, and he is one with him. He comes down and before he could put on the veil there is a light that dazzles the eye of mortal man.

May I tell you: whether you believe it or not, the morning it first happened to me I was alone in my own room on 49th street in New York City. It was four in the morning. There was no moonlight, no reason for light in my room, no light was on -but here was this unearthly light that filled the room and it did not subside until the sun came out. The room was completely radiant with light but no one could see it but myself. So, I tell you this symbolism is true and it is all about you. Everything in the book is about you. As we are told in the 40th Psalm: “In the volume of the book” – some translate it: “In the volume all about me.” It is…the whole book is about you, and these fantastic characters are the eternal spiritual states through which you move. Everything is planted in you and recorded in that first book of Genesis. Then comes the beginning of Exodus where man is making his exit from the world of slavery, the world of Egypt (and it’s not in the Near East) this where I go. This (the body) is the world of Egypt and I am pulling myself out, and there are series of signs which will accompany my exit from Egypt.

One of the signs you are told about only occurred in connection with Israel’s departure from Egypt, and that is the serpent. Moses throws the serpent to show you, and no one understood it, no one. Today how many people understand the symbolism? It is true. It is recorded for us in John 3, that it must take place: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” in the same manner. You will find yourself one day actually experiencing the state of being lifted up in serpentine form, lifted up into heaven. Signs follow, as told us in the book of Deuteronomy: “And Jehovah delivered his people from Egypt by signs and wonders.” Always signs and wonders, everything was a sign, but how to interpret the sign. Wait for it; all these signs will happen.

At the Nativity, the angel gave a sign through the shepherds, and people have completely misunderstood the sign and think it is the event. It is only the sign, which is the deliverance of an individual into heaven from the land of Egypt. Simeon comes into the temple and looks at the Child and tells them: “This is a sign that is spoken against.”

Now in this audience for the last three years, I would not say there were many, but I have heard personally and through the grape-vine, those who spoke against the sign – some never to return in the interval of three years. So this is a sign that will be spoken against. How true the prophecy! Those who come home today socially – we dine together, but they will not be seen here – and when we are together socially, we never discuss the sign. And so, Simeon comes into the temple and sees the Child and makes the prophecy: “This is a sign that will be spoken against.” And those who will come – you haven’t spoken so far against it – but I know dozens who have spoken against it to the point of never having returned to this auditorium. He gives us signs and wonders as he brings us out of Egypt and the story of Christ Jesus, every event, is only a sign.

Not a thing takes place here on this level. Everything recorded about it, from his birth to the very end – the ascension – is a sign; and everything is going to take place in you. The birth, or the miracle, the fantastic things – yes, and the transfiguration too. And when it does take place, you too will swear those who were present to secrecy. And yet the thing is so fantastic you need not even swear them to secrecy, but you do it automatically, because like Peter, James and John, they were not asleep but they were drowsy. And they look at you and they can’t believe the wonder of it all. When they return here to this level they don’t remember, or if they remember they only vaguely remember. Peter was filled with sleep, yet he kept awake, but he was drowsy. So he couldn’t quite see the glory that was given at that moment to the one called Jesus, because in the end when the whole thing vanished, there was only Jesus.

These states remain behind for all to pass through, and one who is left at the very end – he is Christ Jesus. There is nothing at the end but Jesus, and Jesus means “Jehovah saved.” He is a savior and he saves you because you are he. You are self-begotten. In the end you come right out and you are one with the being who begot himself as you. These are the states through which you – the immortal you – must pass to awaken as God, and there is none but God.

Moses is sent. It isn’t voluntary. He is drafted, and he becomes one with the state and he brings himself out of the confusion of the state of Egypt into the harmony, the peace and the joy that is God. He has to pass the state of Elijah – sheer might and power – and he moves through that out to Jesus. So, in the end everyone is Jesus. Everyone will be Christ-like without losing his definite individuality. I will know you and you will know me, and yet you will be transformed and I will be transformed.

I can’t describe what I saw, and I can’t find the words to describe what I revealed to the one and swore her to secrecy, but I am quite sure she was in a state of semi-sleep and would not – or could not – remember. Everyone is destined for it. You may take it lightly and think: “Well, that’s silly,” because that is the whole vast world, and in teaching this story for 2,000 years or beyond that, they don’t see the mystery. It is all a mystery. I have been asked from this auditorium: “Is it right to tell it.” Certainly it’s right to tell it, you can’t restrain yourself, but it is something difficult to describe because it is mysterious in character. Not a thing to be hidden from the world, for you are destined to be Christ Jesus; but you will not become aware of your heavenly inheritance so long as you still wear this garment, which is a veil. But you will continue to do the work and tell your story to all who will listen.

So, Moses begins the great exodus. It really is the beginning of the birth of Israel. He not only attains the birth; in him the state called Israel is born. Then he is pulled out to the flower that is Christ Jesus. But he passes through that mighty state, Elijah. Then you go past him, taken by the wind, into the presence of the Ancient of Days. Then comes the most glorious thing in the world, love. All states, granted, but you will meet them, and meet them in this holy assemblage, and each will be identified, and they are all taught [in] the story of the scripture. So, I tell you: these are not characters. The names signify the eternal states through which you and I pass. Everyone is destined to meet the same end, and the end is – God. We all awaken as God.

So, “Let us make man in our image” is true, and that is Elohim. But the name isn’t really revealed until the journey starts. If you believe the name, read Psalm 9:10: “And those who know thy name put their trust in thee, for thou, O Lord, hast not forsaken those who seek thee.” It should not be “O Lord” for again you get off the beat. The word “O Lord” is Yod He Vau He. He is addressing himself, and we found the name “I AM”. And your name is “I AM” for “I AM” would not forsake myself. That’s really what it means. Read it carefully.

Do you believe the name I told you this night? That is the name of God. If you really do, you’ll put your trust in him. If you go out of here tonight hoping that something other than “the name” will draw you out of sickness, or poverty, or being unknown, or anything else in the world, you have not put your trust in him. If you really believe him, put your trust in his name, and trusting in his name you are moving out of Egypt into the land that was promised. For you rise into a land completely subject to your imaginative power.

Every man needs a state to express him. Moses is a state, Elijah is a state, but it can’t express itself, it needs an agent, and the agent is always man. So man, the pilgrim, moves into a state and then the state becomes animated, and if you saw it, it is personified – that’s man, because you occupy it. Man is the operant power. “Where man is not, nature is barren.” There is no state beyond this drama, which is Christ Jesus. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world” Hebrews 1:1.

Now let us go into the silence.

MY WORD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 04-22-1968

“My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55) This is the same word recorded in the Book of John as: “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.” (John 1) The Revised Standard Version of the Bible has mistranslated the preposition “in” to read “among” as the word, becoming flesh, dwells in us. Notice John used the plural “us”, for it was not a person the word assumed, but the nature of being a person. The word assumed human nature, to become the mold upon which the pattern is molded.

In the beginning the word was with God and was God. The Greek word “logos” (translated “word”) means “pattern, that which gives meaning, a plan.” In the beginning there was a plan called Jesus Christ. He is the pattern man, who took upon himself human nature to become the mold upon which our nature is being formed. The word did not become an individual called John, Neville, Peter, or Grace – but human nature, so that when his work is finished in an individual, he will say: “I am He.”

This is the story of indentured labor, a contract which binds one person to work for another for a given period of time, like an apprentice. In the West Indies, Trinidad, and British Guiana some hundred years ago, they had indentured labor. For fourteen years, the Indians were slaves; then they were given some acreage, a home, and set free to compete with those who had enslaved them. Scripture speaks of indentured labor as: “The Lord God said to Abram, ‘Your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. They will be slaves and oppressed for four hundred years. Afterward, they will come out with great possessions.”‘ Here is a fixed period of time, and slavery will not go beyond this point. Four hundred is the numerical value of taf, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, whose symbol is a cross. Human nature bears this cross for four hundred years. Then the word unfolds itself and human nature is redeemed. Redemption means to redeem an article which was put in pledge by repayment of the loan for which it was given. So we see that: “The creature was made subject until futility; not willingly, but by the will of him who subjected him in hope that we will obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” (Romans 8)

Now, you and I can believe, yet have no consciousness as to why we are here. We are living, animating bodies – but not life-giving spirits. Desiring this knowledge, we were subjected to and sent into slavery for a definite period. There is no other way to be redeemed, so God became us. He is playing the part of you, regardless of what your name is here. We are all God’s word, moving towards a definite end. My word, which is my very self, shall not return to me void. It must accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I send it. And when my word returns, I will discover I am the word which was sent forth, making me – a son of God – equal to God. If the word as God dwells in you and unfolds in you, are you not one with God upon your return?

Ecclesiastes tells us: “He has made everything perfect in its day and he has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” In Hebrew thought, eternity consists of all of the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole. The concentrated time into which the whole is placed, and from which all the generations spring, is called David. That is what is put into the mind. The word “olam” (translated “eternity”) means “a youth; a stripling, a young man.” You will notice that all of these terms are used to describe David. Whose youth is that? Inquire whose son the stripling is. Who are you, young man? These are questions asked by Saul, Israel’s first king, made by human choice from outward observation. Saul was rejected by the Lord. Seeing only the heart, God chose David, claiming he is “A man after my own heart who does all of my will.” So David is Israel’s first king by divine choice, while Saul was the first king by human choice.

After you have gone through all of the generations of men, you will be confronted by a youth, the personification of eternity, which you bring forth as the result of your journey into death. And no one is going to fail; for – as God’s word – you cannot return to him void, but must accomplish what you purposed, and prosper in the thing for which you were sent. At your journey’s end, you will find David, who will cry unto you: “Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.” Here is God’s anointed one, the first born of every creature. As the word possesses you, human nature is put off, and you become the mold upon which divine nature is fashioned and ultimately born. And when the work is completed, the word unveils itself, and David – the result of your frightful pain – calls you “Father”.

With all of the confusion in the atmosphere about racial conflict, my friend Bennie recently shared a vision with me. In his experience, six neighbors (all black) were running toward him carrying knives. Their bodies were lacerated, but healed, and their arms all scarred. Stopping one person, Bennie said: “Don’t you know this is wrong? That violence is stupid? That it is evil?” For one moment the man hesitated and then shook his head and said: “Even if I wanted to, I could not stop it.” This world is a stage upon which man is under compulsion to play his part. How are you going to stop a play and change it because you do not like the part you are presently playing? Because you do not like violence, are you going to stop murder and change the play? Hamlet is murdered every night that the play goes on, and when the curtain goes down he is taken off the stage. Murder is part of the play, already written and unalterable. You can, however, change your way of life within the framework of the play, by the same principle that animates the world.

Now, the word did not inhabit and assume itself to be a particular man, but dwells in us; therefore, you do not have to assume your name is Rockefeller to feel wealthy, but rather you simply assume the nature of wealth.

In the Book of John this question is asked: “What do you want to see, a man shaken by the winds?” Are you looking for a man to bow to? A man to feel inferior to? I have met men I respect, but I do not consider any of them my superior. I respect Einstein’s great mind, but if I stood in his presence, I would not consider him greater than I.

Today I went to the dictionary and looked up the word “person.” It said the word was used in this sense: “In my station in life, I could never know a person of the trade, socially.” Strangely enough, I had that experience at a cocktail party one night. The lady who gave the party apologized profusely for inviting a man and his wife who owned a very successful haberdashery on Madison Avenue. This lady did not earn her money. She had received her wealth from a divorce settlement. But because she was a member of all the exclusive clubs in the city of New York, she felt she was above the couple who earned their living – thereby expressing the dictionary’s definition of the word “person.”
Certainly there are other definitions for the word “person.” The first and final definition is “actor; a mask for one who plays a part.” Here is a part a person is playing. This lady could not see the part, for – feeling detached – she saw the person. Even today, with all of her missions, she still cannot separate the person from the part he plays.

But God, being protean, is playing every part. When Bennie saw the violence, he was looking at his past, trying to tell the truth to those who would listen. Momentarily arresting the attention of one cast in the role of violence, he realized that even if he wanted to stop it, he couldn’t. Being cast in a role, you must play it through to the very end. Then David will come out, bearing witness to the will of God – who entered and completed the drama in order to bring out Sons with life in them. It takes this horrible drama to transform an animated soul into a life-giving spirit. We are taught to believe that if we do certain things we will change the play, but this is not true. “Those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined, he called, and those whom he called, he justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.” Here is a play of five terms, beginning with foreknowledge and ending in glorification.

If at the present time you are financially behind the eight-ball, assume the nature of wealth until you embody it. You must forget a person called Jesus, and think of him as God’s word, which became flesh and dwells in you. He never assumed a person, but man’s nature.

In the state of Abraham, Imagination took upon himself the element of human nature before he took on a personality. Finding himself in human form, the word molds human nature upon himself until humanity becomes the very image of God. And on that day, he who began the good work in you will unveil himself, and you will know that you are God. Having written the play with all of its horrors, God plays all the parts. One day every son will know he is the author of the play. On that day his creative power and wisdom will be enhanced beyond his wildest dreams, because – as life itself – the word assumed the state of death and conquered it.

Now, a lady recently shared a perfectly marvelous experience with me, saying: “I saw myself come out of myself as an old woman, holding a child in her arms. Although I saw her as another, I knew her as myself.” This is a perfect vision of the 18th chapter of Genesis. Sarah was an old woman. It had long since ceased to be with her after the manner of women, yet she brought forth the promised child. In this chapter God speaks to Abraham, and as he tells him of the promise, it turns from the first into the third person. It is said that Sarah laughed because she and Abraham were old. At the time she did not recognize the Lord; but when the one speaking of him in the third person says: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Sarah recognized him and doubted no more. This lady had the vision of Sarah, and will now have the experience of Mary and bear the promised child. That same night, as she closed her eyes, she saw a huge ear, a hammer, and a spike. As she watched, invisible hands drove the spike through the ear. Although she knew the ear was hers, it did not hurt. By that act, this lady fulfilled the 40th chapter of the Book of Psalms, for if you read the footnote you will see that ears will be bored for you. This is done for you to hear the word, coming uninterrupted from within.

Everyone will awaken, regardless of the violence which appears in the world. We have it in our city today, but I say: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Just as the man said to Bennie: “Even if I wanted to, I could not stop it.” If the part you agree to play calls for violence, you will do it, for having agreed to be cast in the role, you must play the part to the finish. Within your sphere, however, you can take on the nature of anything and express it, for you are the world! Take on the nature of health, and health will take on the tones of flesh. Find the feeling of wealth, and you have caught its nature. You don’t have to feel you are a specific individual who is wealthy, healthy, or famous, in order to personify it. God did not assume individuality, but the nature of humanity. He dwells in you, for the word became flesh and dwells in us all.

I am telling you what I know from experience. Believe my words. Dwell upon their meaning and you will awaken from within as God’s word unveils itself in you. You will find the essence of your journey through these four hundred years and redeem yourself. You see, the one who put you into bondage has to redeem you, and the only way he can do it is to give you himself. Life is in the blood. He must redeem you with his life-blood. As your body of belief is split from top to bottom, you will see God’s blood as living, liquid gold. Fusing with it, you become his blood and return to the Holy of Holies as the one who made the supreme sacrifice. You must be redeemed, for he who redeems you pledged himself and must regain his pledge. You were sent into the world, not willingly, but so that you could become as he is. The only way he could do this was to give you his life-blood. While in the world, you are aware of generation and division. But when you become aware of being one with His blood, you move up into regeneration and unity, into the one Being who fell.

Remember, you are the word making this world real, and – although you are totally unaware of it – the Pattern Man is being molded upon your nature. He who began the good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. On that day you will know that you are God. In the meanwhile, imitate God. Name your desire and feel its nature. And when it becomes flesh, don’t forget how it came into being. Don’t give credence to the means, but remember the nature that produced the desire, for this world is a play, and a play it will remain until God’s word redeems himself in all.

Now let us go into the silence.

NEVILLE’S PURPOSE REVEALED

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 25 June 1971

When purpose is revealed, all falls into place. The revelation of purpose gives meaning to everything, and there is a purpose in this wonderful, vast creation of God. Paul said: “He has made known unto us . . . . the mystery of His will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” [Ephesians 1:9, 10] There is a plan behind it all.

Now let us turn to the most disputed verse in Ecclesiastes: “God has put Eternity into man’s mind, yet so that man cannot find out what Cod has done from the beginning to the end.” [Ecclesiastes 3:11]

The Revised Standard Version translates it as “eternity.” The meaning of the word translated “eternity” will determine what meaning you would give to that verse. The word is “olam.” The King James Version translates it as “the world.” “He put the world into man’s mind.”

But the word is “olam.” It really means — in a sense — “history”; but history to the one who wrote it, the Teacher, consists of all the generations of man, including their experiences, and all fused into one grand whole; and this concentrated time into which all things are fused, they call “eternity.” It is from this that all things spring. Now that is in your mind.

All the generations that ever walked the face of this earth, all of their experiences, all that are walking today, all that ever will walk, God placed in your mind. You are not limited to this small, little section of time — threescore and ten years. He took Eternity! Therefore, He gave you Himself! But He hid the gift from the beginning of time to the end.

The gift is God Himself! Believe it, and the whole incredible story of the Gospel will become to you possible. And the day will come, you will experience the gift, and you will know how true it is. God’s purpose is to give Himself to you individually, as though there were no others in the world — just you, for the gift is so complete, it is not you and God; it’s you as God. God became as you are, that you may be as He is. [Paraphrase of Blake’s statement in “Jerusalem”] So in the end, you will not see another as God. It is you as God! This is the story.

Now, in the 4th Chapter of Ecclesiastes, at the very end of the 4th Chapter, he said, “I saw all the living that move about under the sun, as well as that second youth, who was to stand in his place; there was no end to all the people; he was above all of them. Yet those who will come later will take no joy in him. Isn’t that also vanity and the striving after wind?” [Ecclesiastes 4:15,16J

This “second one” spoken of in Scripture is the Lord from Heaven. It begins in the very beginning of Genesis. The “second one” was Abel, the slaughtered, the murdered. As we move through, the “second one” was Isaac, — not Ishmael, the first. We come on through, and it was Jacob, not Esau. A strange reversal of order takes place in all of these adumbrations in Scripture. They are all a foreshadowing of what God has planned for us. There is that “second youth” in us that has to be awakened, and that is God Himself! He is reproducing in us His own image, and that is called the “second man” or the “Lord from Heaven.”

I will share with you, as I’ve done night after night, my own personal experience of Scripture. The story is the only true story in the world. God’s eternal purpose is taking place in time; but it is an eternal state. It’s something that is continuous. It is permanent, in contrast to this fragmented state in time where we seem to begin, and all things that begin here end. But there is something that does not begin. It is continuous. It is in man. It is buried in man, and that that cannot begin or end is God-in-man.

Paul asked the question: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” [II Corinthians 13:5]

Well, the answer to that, if you are honest with yourself, if you have not had the experience, — you would say, “No, I do not. I could believe it, and I will believe it; but I do not know it. For, to experience it would be to know it. Not to experience it and only to believe it would be hearsay, but I want to actually experience it, that I may know it.”

Your purpose in this world is not what the world thinks it is. Therefore they said you do not rejoice. “Those who come later will not rejoice in Him” [Ecclesiastes 4:16, R.S.V.], because they will think their purpose is to make a fortune, to get a bigger house or more houses, to get a name among those who are departing this world, for all these appear, they wax, they vane, they disappear. No matter how long they prolong it, or they think they do, they all vanish; and they want to have some name among the shadows that are vanishing. There is a purpose, and the purpose is to awaken as God — God Himself!

The plan is definite in Scripture. He said, “I have come into the world only to fulfill Scripture.” That’s my purpose. “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the unveiling in me of His plan, which is Christ Jesus” [Philippians 1:6]. He will unveil Christ Jesus in me. Well, when he does, “I am He.”

I have been taught that He dwells in me, but I have also been taught that He came from without. When one experiences the story, he realizes He is not from without at all. He was always buried in me — that Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ. The whole of Him, riot a little piece of Him; but the whole is buried in the seeming part; and that individual, speaking of you now individually, will one day have the experience recorded in Scripture of Jesus Christ!

He said, “I am not of this world. I am from above. You are from below.” [John 8:23]

He isn’t speaking to the crowd on the outside. It’s taking place within the individual. I am speaking now to this conscious, reasoning mind “below” — this garment of flesh and blood, — you are from below. I am from above. I must be born from above. You, Neville, — the flesh-and-blood Neville — you were born from below — from the womb of a woman. I am being born from above — from that place where they laid me when I “died.” I died as God, to awake in man as man, and then to take that man in whom I am buried and raise him to the level of my Self as God.

He is buried in your skull. That is Golgotha. There is no other burial place for Jesus Christ. You can go all over the world looking for his so-called “holy sepulchre”; and you will not find it outside of your own skull. That’s where He is buried. And the day will come that you will find yourself awakening. You will awaken in your own skull, and you will be alone — all alone, and the skull will be sealed — completely sealed; but you now, having awakened within your skull, you have an innate wisdom as to what you should do. You have one consuming desire, and that is to get out.

You are completely sealed in your skull, and you are standing up alone; but you know if you push the base of your skull, something will “give.” And you do; you push it from within, and something rolls away, as described in Scripture: “And the stone was rolled away” [Mark 16:4J. You do it. And then you put your head through that little opening, and you squeeze, and you come out like a child being born, inch by inch by inch. And when you are almost out, you pull the remaining portion of your body out of your skull. And after a few seconds on the ground, you rise again and look back at that body out of which you came. It’s ghastly pale, tossing its head from side to side just like one in recovery from some great or major operation. Then you hear the wind that actually preceded the entire drama — a peculiar, unearthly wind.

Now, “wind” and “spirit” are the same word in both Greek and Hebrew. But you hear the wind; it’s a storm wind. You feel it in your head, and yet you seem to feel it’s coming from the corner of the room where you find yourself. You look over to that corner, not more than a few seconds; and as you look back, the body out of which you emerged has been removed, as told in Scripture: “They have taken away his body, and we do not know where they have laid it.” [John 20:2] The body is gone; it has been removed. But in its place now are seated three witnesses to the event. In my own case, they were my three older brothers. As tradition has it, — it is not in Scripture; but tradition has it, the three who came to witness the birth were brothers: the king of Arabia, king of Persia, king of India; and they were brothers. In my case, they are not earthly kings in my family; they were simply my own wonderful, loving brothers. And there they sat, one at the head, one at one foot, and one at the other. The body was gone, but that’s where it would have been had it remained there: the head and the two feet.

They are equally disturbed because of the wind. My brother Lawrence was the most disturbed; and he rose and started towards the same direction that I started. He hadn’t gone more than a step when something attracted his attention, and he looked down on the floor, and he announced to my other two brothers, “Why, it is Neville’s baby!”

They, in the most incredulous voices, asked, “How can Neville have a baby?”

He does not argue the point. He lifts the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and brings it over and places it on the bed. He didn’t see because I am now Spirit. I cannot be seen by mortal eye. They saw it, and they came and saw the sign that was foretold by the angels. “Go, and you shall find this as a sign, an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes” [Luke 2:12], — and that’s the sign that God Himself was born. “For a Saviour is born this day to you.” [Luke 2:11]

The only “saviour” in Scripture is the Lord God Jehovah. “I am the Lord God, your Saviour,” you are told in the 43d and 45th Chapters of Isaiah, “and beside me there is no saviour.” [Isaiah 43:11 and 45:21] So, the Saviour is being born. That’s exactly what is going to happen to you individually.

I took the infant up, arid then I looked into its face, and I said, “How is my sweetheart?” Then it broke into the most glorious, heavenly smile. As told you, “the name was called Isaac” [Genesis 21:3], which simply means: “He smiles.” The smile is a heavenly smile. While he is looking into my face and smiling, the whole thing dissolves.

Now we come to that “second youth”; and he comes (in my case) a hundred and twenty-nine (129) days after the “birth from above.” An explosion in my head -— the whole drama takes place in your skull. That’s where you were buried, and that’s where the whole drama is going to unfold. A hundred and twenty—nine days later my head began — there’s a vibration, and when it reached the limit — what I thought was the limit, it exploded; and then when the whole thing settled, I am seated at an ordinary table. Before me is a table; on it an enormous head severed from the body. Leaning against the side of an open door and looking out on a pastoral scene is my son David of Biblical fame. Yes, David of Biblical fame! That’s why I say the drama is permanent and continuous. It’s not something that took place, once and for all, two thousand years ago or four thousand years ago; it is taking Place now, and it will continue to take place until His purpose is fulfilled. It cannot he fulfilled until everyone experiences that predetermined drama — for the awakening of God in man as God, — that man in whom He awakes is God!
So, here is David leaning against the side of an open door and looking at me. I have never seen such beauty in my life. David has an unearthly beauty. You can’t describe the beauty of that lad of about 12 or 13. And while I drink him in and feast upon his beauty, the whole thing dissolves; and I know I am his father, and he knows that he is my son.

Until that moment in time, I had no idea there was any relationship between a Biblical character and the one talking to you now. It came as a complete surprise to me that the story told in the Bible is eternally true, and it’s all about us. That David is your “son,” but you do not know it. He put that in your mind in the beginning, “but so that you cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” That is the 11th verse of the 3d Chapter of Ecclesiastes. That is what He put in your mind. That is that “second youth” who is over all of them. As you are told, “He is prince forever [Ezekiel 37:21]. If he is “prince,” his father is “king.” “And the Lord will be king in that day, and his name shall be One; and all will be one.” He is king! The king has a son; the son is a prince. And David is the “prince” forever and forever.

So, here is the unfolding drama of God-in-you, and God is king. But He’s a father. Well, if He’s a father, there must be a son, and the son is David.

Now we read in the story of David:

I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said unto me: “Thou art my son.
Today I have begotten thee.” [Psalm 2:1]

And now the Lord speaks:

“I have found David, . . . . .
He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father,
my God, and the Rock of my Salvation.”

[Psalm 89:20,21]

You will find David, and only when you find him will you really know that you are God. You will not in eternity be persuaded by someone other than yourself. You can only know it — actually know it — by finding David, and David will reveal to you Who-You-Are. That was God’s plan in the beginning. That’s His purpose.

So He set it forth in Christ. Well, the word “Christ” is the Hebrew word “Messiah.” That wonderful poem of Browning, when he tried in his wonderful manner, through the use of words, to reveal the coming of Messiah, — he called the poem “Saul.” If you are not familiar with the story, Saul was insane — King Saul; and David plays the lyre — plays the harp and soothed him when he was demented. Now the story as Browning tells it is this:

David stands before Saul, and he said to Saul: “Oh, Saul, . . . .
A face like my face . . . shall receive 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 new life to thee!”

Then standing before him, he said: “See the Christ stand!”
He is telling you who he is; he is the “Anointed One.” “Christ” means the “anointed one.’

“Rise and anoints him. This is he” [I Samuel 16:12], said the Lord to His prophet Samuel. “This is he.” Who are they speaking to? To Samuel. Of whom? He spoke of David. So Samuel took the ointment, — that is, the oil — the precious oil, and anointed David in the presence of his brothers; “and from that day forward the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David.” [I Samuel 16:13]

Now you are told, “Those who come later will find no joy in Him.” [Ecclesiastes 4:16]

They are so eager to make money, so eager to get a name among shadows, so eager to build monuments to themselves, that they have no time for the story, — they are all about the shadow world. Now, what does he mean, he was above all of them? Well, if you can take it, may I tell you? all these “garments” [indicating the physical body] are shadows. They are part of the eternal structure of the universe. You are “wearing” these garments, and they are you only for a temporary part of your time. They became a part of you when you penetrated them and annexed the brains of them; and so for a little while they are a temporary portion of the soul — but only for a temporary part of your journey. It is not You. These garments –you burn them up — put them into the oven and reduce them to ash, but that’s not You. Throw it into the furnace, and that Fourth One comes out, the Fourth One being your Eternal Being as you. You are told in the Book of Daniel: “Throw them into the furnace,” — reduce them to ashes; but here is the Immortal You that cannot die. But while you are here and you are a part of that little world in which you live, you think it is you, and you’ll die to protect it and do anything to save it while you go about your business trying to make more and more of this shadow world.

He said, “Those who will come later will not rejoice in Him. Is that not a striving after wind?” It’s just like “striving after wind” to build up more and more of the same shadows.

So here, I am sharing with you what I personally have experienced. All the adumbrations of the Old Testament, which are put into the form of a story told as if it were true, — for that’s what is told; it is told as if it were true, and you were taught to believe that it was physically true, and it’s not physically true. It takes place in man. It is more true than any physical story ever could be, for this is eternally true.

Now the third one, you will find yourself, — and this is a marvelous one; the day will come, you will be split in two from top to bottom, and you will see at the base of your spine golden, liquid, pulsing, living light. Although it’s liquid, pulsing light, you know it is your Self; and you fuse with it; and then like a fiery serpent, you rise into your skull. And when you enter, it is just like thunder. You reverberate; your whole head begins one grand, marvelous reverberation. You think it’s going to split; but no, — it subsides, and you have gone hack into Heaven! That’s how you take Heaven, and you take it violently, as told you in Scripture. [See Matthew 11:12,13; and Luke 16:16, R.S.V.]

And then comes the climax; and the climax is when the Spirit descends upon you in bodily form as a dove and smothers you with affection, kissing you all over your face, your head, your neck. He remains on you when the vision begins to fade. Then the drama has been brought to its climax.

You then tell it to the best of your ability, either in the spoken word as I am, or you can write it if you can write. But you tell it to anyone who will listen. It’s not very encouraging if you read the end of Acts because he told it “from morning to evening . . . . some believed him, and some disbelieved him. [Acts 28:23, 24]

Well, the same thing is true here, because man has been taught to believe it is a physical story — a secular story. When I tell them the true meaning of it, then they turn their ears — that is, they clasp their hands over their ears, for they can’t believe that what they were told is not true secularly.

But I tell you, it is not historically true, if by “history” I mean things that took place here on earth. It is eternally true in the Spirit world. And that is what is going to happen to you; and when it happens to you, you will leave this world. And the next time you close your eyes and men call you “dead,” you will be one of those who look down from Eternity upon this world and see all this taking place, and it’s all under you. That is what he meant: “I saw all those who go about under the sun, and he was over all of them.” All these things are simply under his control. Everything here is taking place by those who contemplate it above.

So when we are told the story: He stood before the judge, and the judge said, “Who are you?” he said, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”

He said, “Are you a king?”

He said, “You say that I am, but my kingdom is not of this world.”

It hasn’t a thing to do with this world; he came only to bear witness to the truth, and the truth was the Word of God. So, he cane to express that Word, and the Word had to find expression in him; then he tells it to the world. “Some believed, and some disbelieved.”

There is no personal description of Jesus in the Scriptures. So, forget all the pictures that you have seen, no matter how good the artist. No personal description of Jesus in the Bible because you are the Lord Jesus Christ. And the day will come, they will know you to be Jesus Christ, regardless of your sex. And they will know you, identified as you are, — you are Mary, you are John, you are Jim, you are Stanley, you are Benny; and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. They will know you as their friend, and still know that you are the Lord.

So, everyone will be the Lord Jesus Christ, They all form “one Body, one spirit, . . . one God and Father of all,” — without loss of identity. You are individualized; and you tend forever and forever towards an ever greater individualization. You reach that climax of it all as what you are individually but as the Lord! And they will see you and know that you are the Lord, while you are walking this earth, may I tell you? Not in some after-death state.

When this thing happens to you, there are those in your circle of friends who will see you, and they can’t believe their own eyes, but they can’t deny what they saw. They will know you are the Lord. They will dine with you the next night, have a drink with you, tell you a joke; you tell them one, and still they can’t get it out of their heads that they saw you and you were the Lord. They know that you are the Lord, and yet you are the same friend they have always known. But they saw you as you really are after you have been born from above.

So, man must be born from above or he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Everyone will be born from above, for that One to be born is already in man dreaming. The Dreamer-in-man is Jesus Christ. You are dreaming this world. Now dream it nobly. Dream noble dreams. All can come to pass.

In your dreams dare to assume that you are the man that you want to be. Assume that you are it, and persist in that assumption; and that assumption, in a way you do not consciously know, will harden into fact. All assumptions if persisted in become what the world calls “reality.’ So, do not give up. The most fantastic dream can become true if you assume it and walk in the assumption as though it were true.

Night after night, sleep as though you are the man — the woman — that you would be or that you would like to be. And then, if tomorrow does not bring it to pass, it doesn’t matter. There are intervals of time between the assumption and its fulfillment. It’s like generation. So, if you dare to assume it, give it time. And then some bridge of incidents will be built for you without your conscious knowledge of it, and it will lead you across that bridge to the fulfillment of your assumption in a way that you do not know.

So, dare to assume a noble concept of yourself. Live in it as though it were true; and may I tell you? It will become true.

Now a lady wrote me this week and asked me if I could throw some light on this. She said, “I found myself in a dormitory. I recall the dormitory, for I was in that school from the age of 12 to 18. But here you are as an instructor, and you are teaching all of us how to solve puzzles. You did not actually do it for us; you allowed us to use our own talents, but you are instructing. You were the instructor teaching us how to solve puzzles, leaving us full freedom to make our own efforts.

“Then you sat next to me, and you asked me this, — and this puzzled me because I do not understand what it means. You asked me, ‘Do you know what twenty-seven is?’”

Do you know what twenty-seven is?

Now she said, “I do not, and I cannot throw any light on it whatsoever. If you can throw some light on it, please do.”

Well, there are twenty-two letters to the Hebrew alphabet; but really they are twenty-seven, for there are five finals. Twenty-two originals, but five are repeated and called “finals.” So, there are twenty-seven letters.

I would suggest to this lady to read the 27th Psalm tonight. Take the 8th verse. It’s a glorious Psalm. It is not long — a very short one.

Thou hast said to me, “Seek ye my face.”
My heart says to thee,
“Thy face, Lord, I seek.
Hide not Thy face from me.” [Psalm 27:8,9]

That’s the whole drama, the Father and the Son, for no one can reveal the Father but the Son. And this is the Son — David — speaking. He is speaking to his Father: “Hide not Thy face from me.”

Yet you told me to seek your face.

My heart says to you,
“Thy face, Oh, Lord, I seek.
Hide not Thy face from. Me.”

That’s the drama.

Now in her letter she said, “Recently I have been having these dreams where I know I am dreaming. I am trying so hard to see what I am seeing, but I know I can open my eyes and see differently; but I am struggling to open the eyes and they won’t open.”

They are actually on the verge of it, my Dear. You must open the in-current eye, because you are going to see inwards into the world of thought — into Eternity — that which is ever expanding in the bosom of God, — what is it? The human imagination.

As someone wrote, they had their ears pierced — not the lobes of the ear, but the very center of the ear. Yes, they must be pierced, too, as told you in the 40th Psalm: “Ears Thou hast pierced for me.” [Psalm 40:6] You have made holes in them, that I may hear the heavenly sphere; we only hear the sounds out here — the noises. But there are ears to be pierced, and there are eyes to be opened. Then in-current eyes open up into the world of Eternity, into the world of thought, and forever expand; and that eye is the human imagination, which is one with God. 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.”
[Blake, from “Annotations to Berkeley”
and “The Laocoon”]

So, be careful what you imagine. I don’t care how trivial it is, it will come to pass. The whole vast world is nothing more than the confused imaginations of men and women. So, if it seems confused, it is because man is not in control of his imaginal acts. He thinks he can imagine anything with impunity, but he cannot. It all comes into the world to confront him, and to show him what his harvest is. He planted it somewhere along the way; and now here comes his harvest, and he doesn’t recognize his own harvest.

Now, this being my last night, — I have no plans for the future, — I am going to give you a full opportunity to ask questions. First of all, let us go into the Silence.
(Following the Silence): Now are there any questions? Don’t be embarrassed. This is my last night here; so take full advantage of it.

(A lady asks a question that is unintelligible on the tape.)

NEVILLE: The question is, — you will find it in the end of the Gospel of John when he asks Peter if he loves him. “Peter, lovest thou me?”

And he says, “Yes, Lord, thou knowest that I do,”

He repeats this question three times, and it annoys Peter at the end. That’s the story. [See John 21:15 and following.]

I can say in words that I love you. I want it carried to the depths of your own being; so I repeat it. I repeat myself here night after night after night, because people I think heard me, and then I discover they didn’t really. If they had heard me to the point of belief, they would live by it, because man lives by his beliefs. And when I find them not living by what they have confessed in words that they believed, I know that they really didn’t believe it at all, because man lives by belief.
Then I say, “Well, do you believe it? Do you really believe that what I have told you is true, that I was born from above? Do you really believe that David is my son, and he is the son of God; and therefore he revealed to me who I really am as against what I thought I was?”

You may say in words, “Yes, I believe you.”

Then I may find you after that disbelieving by your behavior. And so, at the very end he asks him three times; and you will find the word that he used to be “love.” There are different words. “Eros” is love on the lowest level, and man mistakes that for love. “Aphrodite”(?), that’s love — something entirely different. So, man thinks of sex. All right, I am not denying sex. Sex is a very important thing in this world — very important; but people will say, ‘I love you,” meaning sex. Others, an entirely different emotion permeates them.

I stood in the presence of Infinite Love, and it’s Man; but there was no feeling of sex about it. He embraced me, and our bodies became one body; we fused, when I answered his question. He said, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered, “Faith, hope and love; these three. The greatest of these is Love.” [I Corinthians 13:15] At that, he embraced inc. Now, our two bodies became one body. As we are told in Scripture, “The two shall be one.” [Matthew 19:5]

But on this level, sex plays a very important part; but the day will come, the body is going to be split in two from top to bottom, and that energy that went into generation will be reversed and move into regeneration. So, he asked the question at the very end of the drama.

Now, let me make this statement: When I said, “He asked the question,” — the Gospels were written by anonymous characters. No one knows who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are, — no one. They are anonymous names. They were only relating their own experience, but they told it in the form of a story. So, here is an allegory.
An allegory is a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who reads it or who hears it to discover its hidden meaning and learn its truth. So, they related their own experience, whoever Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were. They took the name because a name in Scripture has great significance; it’s not just a title or, I would say, some little tag.

The name “Jesus” is the same as the word “Jehovah.” The same “Yod He Vau” begins both words. The root is the same. “Jehovah” is “Salvation.” Jesus is called the Saviour; that’s salvation. And so, the Saviour was born, — Jehovah was born in a man and they related their own experience and told it beautifully. But–

“Truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.” [Tennyson]

So, they told it in the form of a story, that it would be accepted that way; and then gradually as you accept it, it will unfold in its true form.

So, Peter was the one who denied him three times before the cock crowed. So, he is still reminding him that he did at the very last deny him. “You turned your back upon me three times, and I told you the cock would not crow until you had denied me three times, and then the third time you wept bitterly because you knew how prophetically true my words were.”
So, man will swear, “ I will live by this for the rest of my days.” All right, you don’t have to swear. Try it! Try living by it! It’s not the easiest thing in the world to watch one’s imagination morning, noon and night, and to actually control it as you would a boat at sea when you steer it in the direction you want it to go. But, it has to be done eventually. Therefore, get started now.

“If you say you love me, you will keep my word,” he says.

So Peter says, “You know I love you.”

Well, the only way you can love me is to obey my word. “Those who love me,” he said, “obey the word.”

“What must I do to be doing the work of God? [John 6:28]

“Believe in him whom He has sent.” [John 6:29]

Well, the only one you can believe in — what? A little man? No; believe in the teaching, for he tells you, “They aren’t my words, but the words of Him who sent me.”

So, if you really believe that, you will believe the words and live by them. So, he asked it three times and let Peter deny him three times.

Are there any other questions, please?

(A gentleman asks a question that is not intelligible on the tape.)

NEVILLE: That was a colored man in Barbados. His name was Jordan. I was a boy. Of course, I didn’t know the story until I was in my 20’s. It was never told me. But I am one of nine brothers and one sister. My brother Victor met the prophet Jordan. He was known as “the prophet.” He was light-skinned; he was a mulatto, and everyone looked upon him as one who really had the prophetic vision. And he met my brother Vic, and he said to Vic, “What number are you in the Goddard family?”

Vic said, “I am the second.”

He said, “Now, what do you want to be?”

He said, “I want to be a businessman.”

He said to my brother Victor, “You are going to be a very, very successful businessman.”

Now he said, “What does the third one want to be?” That was my brother Lawrence.

He said, “He wants to be a doctor.”

He said, “He will be a very good, successful doctor. But,” he said, “don’t touch the fourth one. He belongs to God. The Lord has sent him to do a definite work; so don’t touch him. You can’t persuade him to do anything outside of that work that God sent him to do.” So, I happen to be the fourth one. Now that is what my brother Victor told me when I went back after I was gone for twelve years.

NO OTHER FOUNDATION (1)

December 22, 2013

Neville 11-04-1968

Defining Christ as God’s power and wisdom, Paul makes this statement: “No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ. If you build on it with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or stubble, your work will become manifest. It will be revealed by the day. If the work survives, you will receive a reward. If it is destroyed, you will suffer loss; but you yourself will be saved, but only as through fire.” Then he adds this thought: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3)

Paul was made an apostle for the purpose of laying the foundation of Jesus Christ. He did not commission himself as a physical man, but was drafted, called, and sent through an act of grace. When I was drafted, called, and sent, it was with the command: “Down with the bluebloods.” In other words, down with all church protocol, with anything that would interfere with the individual’s direct access to God. There is only one foundation upon which to build. That foundation is I am, and there is no other!

The temptation is always there to build upon other foundations. This morning I received a chain letter telling me that I would receive a great fortune if I would send twenty copies of the letter to friends. If I did not, something terrible would happen to me. After reading the stupid thing I threw it away. Had I accepted that letter, I would have been building on a foundation other than the one foundation, which is Christ.

In his infancy, man thinks everything outside of himself is the cause of the phenomena of life. Many believe in astrology. I must confess at one time I did also. Years ago I taught astrology to a dear friend who was a retired school teacher. Desiring to augment her retirement income, she became an astrologer. One day I found her in tears. It seemed that she was sitting next to an open window when a breeze blew the papers, causing her to draw the chart of a man who was born ten years later than her customer. Not realizing this, she convinced herself – and the man – that his business venture would be a success. The customer promised to wire her $100 if this were true.

Norma saw in the chart what the man wanted to hear, and she believed her little hieroglyphics. That is all that mattered. She was self-persuaded, so the whole thing was done. This is based upon the foundation: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.”

By this time I had outgrown my belief in monkey bones, astrology, teacup leaves, numerology, or anything outside of my own wonderful human imagination; for having tested myself, I knew that all things were possible to the imagination. Although I told Norma this, I could not console her. But that evening I was there when a Western Union messenger brought her a check for $100 from the man who had promised it. Even though Norma understood the truth of the one foundation, astrology brought her a small income, so she remained a professional astrologer until her death.

Norma is not alone. Many a minister, priest, or teacher, knows that what he teaches is not true; but he is not willing to stand on his own feet and believe in the one foundation. But I was sent with the words, down with the bluebloods, knowing I had to eliminate every intermediary between myself and my God – for he and I were one.

God is your own wonderful human imagination and there never was another. He actually took upon himself all of the limitations and weaknesses of the flesh that you – in turn – may discover who God is, believe in yourself, apply your belief, and awaken one day to the realization that you are he in every sense of the word.

I was sent by the same being who sent Paul. I stood in the presence of the Risen Lord. I answered his question, and as we embraced we fused into one body. At that moment I was united to the Lord by becoming one spirit with him. Then I sent myself, so when you see me, you see the one who sent me, as I am never alone. You cannot see me with the mortal eye, for I am spirit, one with my spiritual sender. The same thing is true in this statement: “There is only one foundation, which is Jesus Christ, and besides me there is no other.” (1 Cor. 3)

Now, if to dream is to dwell in unreality, not known for such, what is life but one long, uninterrupted dream? Many times I have gone to bed, closed my mortal eye, to see a room – vivid in every detail, yet unseen from my bedroom. While my body is stretched out on the bed, I have stepped into that room, which – upon entering – became three-dimensional to me. As I did, that world closed in around me and this world was shut out. My wife, my children, all that I know as real here, was but a dream – a memory image -compared to the world into which I had stepped.

One night in particular I stood in a hotel lobby. Remembering what I had done to get there, I tried to explain to two ladies that it was a dream. They became so frightened, I realized that I must return to my bed before they called the police and had me arrested. So I closed my eyes to the hotel lobby and opened them, thinking I would see the familiar bedroom where my physical body was, only to discover I was still standing in the lobby. Then I realized that, although I had entered an entirely different world consciously, I did not know how to return.

Although I knew of no road that would lead me back, I knew that feeling was the secret. So, while standing in a solidly real body, I imagined my head was on a pillow. I persisted until I knew I was there. Then I realized that my body was dead. That I was a living presence which had moved into it. It seemed like an eternity before I could move my little finger, my arm from the elbow down, and finally to feel the warmth of my wife’s body and know I had returned.

The world we enter at night is just as real as this one. Like this world, everything there contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. At the end of your day (or night) dream, try to interpret it symbolically, as there is only one foundation for your dreams; and that is your own wonderful human imagination.

A friend wrote telling of a dream which, although it seemed as though years separated the events, it took place in one night. At four different moments in time, he entered a very plush eating establishment in England, where he was recognized and greeted as royalty. Deciding to disguise himself, he entered the rear door, when the maitre d’ pointed to him and said to a waiter: “He really is the Lord.”

This experience is more than a dream; it is a memory of a previous experience which must now be interpreted on a different level. My friend has reached the point where his shadow world is recognizing him as the Lord. Only when he reaches the end of his journey, will confirmation come to bear witness to his true identity.

May I tell you all: it does not matter what part you play in this dream of life. What does matter is that you are destined to become the Lord. You could be playing the part of a thief, judge, prisoner, or warden; but one day you will awaken and know yourself to be the Lord.

Now, when you think of your dream of the night, it will appear to be an experience in a shadow world; but if you had awakened there you would have known its reality. If I had not deliberately stepped into the hotel, but unconsciously found myself there, I would have called it a dream; for an experience, knowingly executed, seems real – while those slipped into unknowingly seem unreal. Yet all unrealities, not known to be such, are real; for the reality of a dream does not differ from the reality of this world – for it, too, is a dream.

Let nothing come between you and that foundation of which Paul speaks and defines as the creative power of God and the wisdom of God, no matter what it may appear to be. Allow no one to come between you and God, for God is your own wonderful human imagination, and who can lead you there?

Every moment of the day you are thinking. Be careful what you think, for your thoughts will be tested by fire, and if they survive you will receive a reward. Your thought (your imagination) is fireproof. But if you believe fulfillment is conditioned on a chain letter, another person, or going to church and praying to an unknown God, then something has come between you and the one foundation. Nothing must come between you and your imagination (thought), who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Believe me. Make imagination your one solid foundation. Do this and you will enjoy a freedom you have not known before. It is a fantastic freedom! Just imagine and it’s done!

Imagination is the only foundation. No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Man has tried to lay other foundations in the many isms of the world. These are not Jesus Christ, for he is man’s I amness, man’s human imagination, and there is no other God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, whose name forever and ever is I AM!

Accept awareness as your way of life, and you will find a freedom you have never known before. You will become aware of the fact that everyone and everything is yourself pushed out. You will awaken as God, the father of all life, to realize that although things appear to die they do not, for nothing dies in Christ.

I know in my own search I laid many foundations. I was taught to believe that eating meat was one, so for seven years I was a strict vegetarian. I was so good I was good for nothing. I didn’t eat meat. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink and I was a celibate. At my tender age I did not realize that my attempt to be the celibate came from my complete disgust in my first marriage, so when we separated I took the vow of celibacy. I was not physically prepared for it, as I was every inch a man, but fortunately the starvation diet of vegetable life aided my decision.

At that time I was a professional dancer. While traveling across the country I would go into a restaurant and order soup, provided there was no meat stock in it. Now, what restaurant worthy of the name would make a soup without meat stock? Well, I would believe the waiter and have a good meal once in a while. Then one day before leaving for Barbados, my friend Ab said to me: “You will die, but you will not surely die.”

His prophecy proved to be true, for when I returned, I had died to everything I had not done for the previous seven years. He knew the time had come to break that spell within me. I do hope you don’t have to go through it. There is only one foundation and no other foundation – be it diet or celibacy – can anyone lay, but that which is laid, which is the human imagination.

My friend, Norma knew that her hieroglyphics meant nothing; yet she could not give up the money she derived from her clientele. She had almost everyone in the Metropolitan Opera as a client. You see, just because one breaks into the artistic world, it does not mean that he is wise. He can be just as stupid as all outdoors.

I have said to Norma: “You know I don’t believe in astronomy any more, but I do believe in my intuitive power. Tell me what the man wants and I will show you how to see it in the charts, that you may be self-persuaded. And when you are, where is the power of persuasion but in your imagination? It certainly isn’t in the chart!”

I urge you not to go to anyone on the outside. The desire you seek is housed within you. You can become self-persuaded of anything, and if you do, it will project itself on your screen of space. Take gold, the wisdom of revealed truth. Take silver, the knowledge which comes from experience, or the precious stones of noble and lovely thoughts; for fire will not destroy them. When you are in doubt, do the loving thing. If you think something terrible is going to happen, rub it out of your mind. There is no plot to destroy you as an individual, race, or nation. It’s not in scripture! Causation is in the mind of the one who is self-persuaded; and there is no other cause, for the world is awareness pushed out.

You are not fated to become wise or foolish, rich or poor. It’s entirely up to you what you build on the only foundation. If you had wise parents and they told you that you could live in comfort and freedom, be honored and wanted, because of your contribution to the world, and you believed them, you would become it. Many parents compare their children to the neighbors’ child and find theirs wanting, thinking that is the way to jack them up; but it is not. Instead, they are made to feel little and unwanted. But if you make a child feel noble and important, he will become it.

In scripture, the one who claimed that his father was God and that he was one with his father, was accused of blasphemy; but he walked as though he were, If you would do the work of God, you must assume that you are he. You cannot do the work of one that you do not feel you are. You must claim your awareness is Jesus Christ in order to know who you really are.

I tell you the world you step into tonight when you put your head on a pillow is just as real as this one. Men claim it is a shadow and unreal, yet from these so-called dreams they interpret their state of consciousness. How can anyone interpret that which is unreal? The reality of that world as opposed to this one is solely produced from the level upon which consciousness is focused. If you are thinking from that world it seems the only reality. Focus your attention on this level, however, and that world will seem unreal. So, objectivity and subjectivity are solely determined by the level of consciousness upon which the individual is focused.

I hope you will take me seriously, as there is no other foundation. You need not be born into a certain nation, race, or religious belief to experience your desire. You can become the lady or gentleman you want to be by standing on the only foundation. Many successful people had no social, financial, or political foundation to get them where they are. They simply believed in themselves. They imagined they were what they wanted to be by living as though they were. Then in a way no one could devise, their assumption externalized itself.

Most people, after externalizing their desire, forget the ladder by which they did ascend. I hope you will not. You don’t need to brag, but if anyone should ask you how you achieved your goal, tell them how – in spite of any so-called worldly requirements – you believed you already were the person you wanted to be, and possessed the section of the world you wanted to possess. Do this, that you may encourage him to do the same.

Can you believe in this one and only foundation? If the word Jesus Christ offends you, use another. I love the word because I know its meaning. Jesus Christ is the power and the wisdom of God who is your own wonderful imagination.

Dare to assume that you have your desire. You may feel you do not have the wisdom to find the means to get it, but you do. If it takes one thousand or ten thousand people to play their parts to bring you into the embodiment of what you have assumed you are, they will play their parts, knowingly or unknowingly. You don’t have to be concerned as to who is going to aid you. Simply dare to assume you are what you want to be, and you will compel everyone to play their part to bring about your assumption. That is life.

Live so that your mind can store a past worthy of recall, because any section of your past that cannot stand the fire will suffer loss. Build nobly, for you will continue to be confronted with your past until God awakens within you.

When this glorious knowledge awakens and you realize you are the one spoken of in scripture, you will be thrilled beyond measure. I know! And I will tell you from experience that the Bible is your biography and you are destined to experience everything recorded there as one called Jesus Christ. There never was another. He has always been you!

You are the dwelling place of God and the spirit of God dwells in you. His dwelling place is holy. That place you are, therefore you must be God. How will you know this? By dying to your delusions. Every foundation, every belief other than the belief in yourself, is a delusion that must die; for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, and that being you are!

Now let us go into the silence.

NO OTHER FOUNDATION (2)

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 10-10-1969

In Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians he said: “No other foundation can anyone lay then that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” And in his 2nd letter he asked: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Now I ask you: who is this Jesus Christ who is in you? He is your own wonderful human imagination – the foundation stone of your world! Your dreams create your world, and the dreamer dreaming those dreams, is your human imagination scripture calls Jesus Christ.

You may think of Jesus as someone other than yourself, someone separate and apart from you, but I tell you, Jesus Christ is in you as your wonderful human imagination. He is the dreamer, the foundation of your day as well as your night dreams. You may not be able to write a letter, paint a picture, or carry a tune, but you can dream because Jesus Christ is in you.

Now let me take you into the greatest story ever told man. It is the story of the Lord Jehovah, the being you really are. The Bible is your autobiography. You dictated it, recorded it, then came into the world to fulfill it – and you will!

People are forever looking for the coming of Christ, but he cannot come from without, for Jesus Christ is already within! He comes when the dreamer in you awakens and the dream comes to its end.

As the dreamer awakens, you awaken by a series of events which were predetermined before the world was. Let man speculate as to the age of the earth, the moon, and all the things round about him. That’s perfectly all right; it’s part of the dream, too. But when your individual dream comes to its end you – its dreamer – will find yourself awakening within your skull, the skull where Jesus was buried. You will come out of that skull, fulfilling Peter’s words: “You are born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Now, no one here thinks he is dead. We think those who depart this scene are dead, while we are very much alive; but I tell you: those who appear to be dead are no more dead than an actor who leaves the stage. Rather, they are restored to life in a world just like this, to continue their dream just as you and I continue it here. They have a body just like the one they left behind, only young – about twenty, where they can continue their dream until the dreamer in them awakes by a series of events which take place in them.

The series begins with a peculiar awakening within yourself to discover you are in your skull, the skull where you were entombed. Then you come out of that sepulcher to find the symbolism described in scripture surrounding you. You do not bring forth a child; the child you find merely symbolizes your birth, for you are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, to discover that you are the dreamer who – having foretold exactly what would happen, in symbolism – awoke from the dream of life.

Those who are not awake will continue to fight shadows in this world, for everything here is imagination made visible. Shelley once said:

“He has awakened from the dream of life.
‘Tis we who, lost in stormy visions,
Fight with phantoms and unprofitable strife.”

Those who are fighting against the establishment do not realize that they are fighting against the objectified images of their own mind. But the day will come when he who is dreaming his world into being, will awake within himself to know he is its foundation, the one the Bible calls Jesus. The words “Jesus” and “Joshua” mean “Jehovah, the Lord’s salvation.” A man is saved from his dream by returning to the state he occupied before the dream began.

When Jesus told those who were listening to him that he came down from heaven, they could not understand his words, for they knew his physical father and mother, his physical brothers and sisters. Seeing only the outer man, they thought he had a demon and was mad.

Man is looking for a savior to change the establishment and society in the outside world when it is but a reflection of a dream whose reality lies deep within him. A savior will never be found in the midst of shadows. He will only be found when he who laid himself down within the individual man awakens in a wonderful series of events.

Everything said of Jesus Christ in scripture is said of you, for you are the dreamer, and the world is your dream pushed out. Fight with it if you will. Do as you like, but you will not awaken until the dream is finished. Then you will awaken to discover that you are its dreamer and creator. There is nothing but your wonderful human imagination! There is no other God. There is no other Jesus Christ. There is no other Lord. Your human imagination is the God of scripture. This I know from experience.

The series of events which will take place at your awakening begins with your resurrection. You will not resurrect from any cemetery, for every cemetery is conceived by dreaming man who desires to make money. There is no holy ground outside of where you stand, for the holy sepulcher is the human skull. That is where God is buried; and one day, when your dream is complete, you will awaken, not to find yourself in a world you like or dislike, but within your skull which is completely sealed, like an egg whose seal must be broken from within. This you will do, and coming out of that skull, you will know yourself to be the same being you were when you retired the night before.

There will be no change of identity, but the symbolism of scripture will be there. You will find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, whose birth will be witnessed by three others. Two, taking the child literally, will deny that you could bring it forth; but one witness will find the evidence and present it to you, the being who awakened from the dream of life. You will take that infant in your arms, and as you speak to it endearingly the vision will dissolve.

You will go from there into another section of scripture, for you are the Spirit of Jehovah who inspired the prophets to write the Old Testament. And you are the Spirit of Jehovah called Jesus, who controlled the lives of those who wrote the story in the New. Following your spiritual birth, you will fulfill the word you inspired the psalmist to say in the 2nd Psalm as “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me, `Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”‘ Having come into the world to fulfill your own prediction, you must find David and he must cry unto you, “Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.”

This second grand event comes when suddenly the David of Biblical fame stands before you. At that moment there will be no uncertainty as to who he is and who you are. You will know the relationship of father/son and he will know it too. David is the result of all of your experiences of humanity. He is the same David as is described in the 16th chapter of the Book of 1 Samuel. If you date David chronologically, you would discover that he lived 3000 years ago; but the Bible does not record secular, but salvation history, as the events do not take place here.

This is the hell into which God descended and dreams his dream of life. God – your human imagination, your awareness – came out from being aware of being the Father and entered the world by becoming aware of it. The day will come when the world will lose its hold and you, human imagination, will return to the Father as the Father. You entered this wonderful world of adventure for the purpose of expansion, for if the limit of expansion was already reached, it would be hell.

Just imagine if you could never go beyond what you are. That would truly be hell would it not? Omnipotence has no part of scripture. God must ever be expanding his wisdom and his power. Having limited yourself to the contraction and opacity called “man”, you will break the shell and know an expansion far beyond what you were, prior to your descent from your
exalted state into this limited one.

Yes, Christ will come, but not as the world expects, for “When Christ comes, no one will know where he came from.” They will see a man such as the speaker. The records will show that he was born in the year 1905 in a little island called Barbados; yet I tell you I am not of this world, for I came down from heaven and have only just remembered it.

Believing I was Neville Goddard, a member of a certain family and race, I have been suffering from amnesia. My memory has returned now and I know that I came out from my own being, who is God the Father, for a purpose – to wear a garment called a brother, a son, and a friend. The garment I wear has many names to many people. I wear this garment, but I am not it. I came out from myself and came into the world. Having accomplished the purpose for which I came, I am now leaving the world and returning to myself.

There are those who would question my sanity and believe I have a devil; that I am mad because I do not believe in an external God, but rather I believe that I am God. And they challenge me relative to what I can do in the world saying: “If you are God, turn this stone into bread, or fall off a cliff and let us see if he will give you support,” – but I say to this doubting Thomas: get behind me. I have told you what I have experienced. Believe me, for in time you will duplicate it. One day you, too, will know that you are God the Father, for you are he who inspired the psalmist to say: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord.” You are that Lord who inspired him to write the words: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”

You have come here to fulfill your word. But before this dream can come to its end, you must play every part you created in the beginning, be it the part of the rebel or the conservative, the murdered or the murderer, the rich man or the poor man. Having played all, you will forgive all, because it takes every experience of humanity to beget your son David and say: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”

A few months later another promised event will occur. It is said that: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.” The son of man is Christ, your dreaming being. When this event is fulfilled, you will find yourself split in two from the top of your skull to the base of your spine, with the parts separating about six inches. At the base of your spine you will find a golden liquid light which is pulsing and living. As you look at it you recognize yourself and consciously fuse with it. Then, like a fiery serpent you move up that spinal cord to enter your skull as it reverberates like thunder. Try as you will you cannot get out, for your skull contains the dream of which you are its life.

The final act will come as that skull becomes translucent, so transparent there is no circumference. Looking up you will see a dove floating about twenty feet above you, its eyes lovingly fixed upon you. In my own case, I raised my left hand, and as I extended my index finger the dove descended and lit upon it. Then I brought it close, and the dove smothered my face and neck with affection, as a woman at my side said: “They avoid humanity because man gives off such an offensive odor. But because of his love for you, he penetrated this ring of offense.”

At that moment I fulfilled scripture: “He upon whom you see the Spirit descend in bodily form as a dove and remain, that is he.” But I am not alone. I am only a sample. I am telling you what has happened to me and what will happen to all. Let the world continue on its way. Let the riots occur, the wars and rumors of wars, for they will go on forever. There is nothing new under the sun.

Evolution appears only in the affairs of man, but not in the creation of God. His creation occurred as one grand explosion, an orgasm which released only one place to cradle his biological experiment. That place is earth. Blake knew this; that is why he said: “We are put on earth a little space to learn to bear the beams of love.” This we are doing even though we don’t see any evidence of it. Instead we see only hate and violence of man against man as individuals set themselves up as the authorities to follow, not knowing that time moves on and one day he, too, will be as old as the speaker, then no one will trust him any more than they now trust anyone over thirty. This goes on forever, for there is nothing new under the sun.

But I am telling you what I know from experience and what is known from experience is known more thoroughly than any other way in this world. You may know something from hearsay, you may read it in a book, see it in a play, or hear it from the speaker; but you cannot know it in the true sense of the word until you have experienced it. When the dreamer in you begins to awake, then you realize that the world is a dream and you can prove it to yourself.

If this waking world is as much a dream as your sleeping world, you should be able to control it. In the dream of last night you might have been frightened and believed for a moment that the event was real, outside of yourself, and beyond your control.

Only when you awoke did you discover that it was a dream. Had you known at the time that it was a dream, you could have controlled it and made the event conform to your desire. Now awake in this world, you think it is real and outside of yourself, but I tell you: this world is a dream, too. It is every bit as much a dream as the dream of the night, only it is more difficult to control because it appears so real and independent of your perception. But it can be controlled by a simple act of assumption.

Let us assume that this is a dream and everything is perfect. You are happy and content and all is right in your world. Then persuade yourself of the reality of your assumption. Don’t do anything to make it so; just trust the dreamer in you to bring it to pass, for the power who assumed your desire is the Lord Jesus Christ, and all things are possible to him. Your assumption, though false in the sense that it is denied by your senses and reason, if persisted in will harden into fact in such a normal, natural way that you will think it would have happened anyway. That is the dream. When imagination fulfills itself so naturally, it is easy to question that your assumption had anything to do with it; but I tell you it could not have happened without your assumption, for your awareness is the one and only cause of the phenomena of your life.

Use your imagination consciously, and after a while you will stop fighting shadows. The conflict within you will cease and your world will be at peace. Let those who are still asleep dream their violence into the world. It’s perfectly all right, for in its midst you will walk knowing you are protected, for you are awake. This is your dream, too, and no dreamer can be destroyed by his dream.

You can stop dreaming violence and start dreaming peace while you are here, and share your awareness with those who will listen -but not everyone will. Instead they will call you mad and think you have a devil, just as they did of one called Jesus in scripture.

This man is mad, for he claims he came down from heaven, yet we know his father Joseph and his mother Mary. He claims that he existed before our father Abraham. How could one living in this century say that David, one who preceded him by 2,000 years, be [sic] his son?

He doesn’t believe in reincarnation, but in two births: – a physical one that never comes to an end until the second birth takes place. And only one death, which took place at the beginning of time, when he became embodied in a body of flesh and blood and became its slave. He claims he was reborn through the act of awakening from the dream he imposed upon himself in order to expand his power and his wisdom beyond what it was when he made the decision to make man in his image.

Right now you are living in a fabulous world you created, filled with those who agreed to dream with you in concert. Everyone is dreaming his own dream. One dreams he wants to change the world. They call him Hitler or Stalin and millions of people appear to be killed, but they do not die. Rather, they simply depart this section of time and move into another, not even knowing they departed. Others will come and dream their desire of change and create a world in their own image; yet I tell you the whole thing was done before the world began. You are seeing simply the unfoldment of a purposed end which, as God, we agreed upon before we began the adventure.

There is no other foundation. Our scientists will continue to find new hypothesis to experiment with, relative to life and its cause. That’s all right, for they are dreaming, too. This world began as a grand orgasm of God, with only this tiny little spot called earth capable of cradling life for the great experiment to take place.

Then the dream you and I are dreaming began. If you don’t think it is a dream, take some section of your life that seems beyond redemption and rearrange it in your mind’s eye. Make it as you would like it to be. Persuade yourself of its truth and wait, because its fulfillment has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late. It will come into your objective world to bear witness to the reality of your assumption. Then you, too, will know that the world is a dream and you are its dreamer, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament and the Jehovah of the Old.

The Old Testament is an adumbration – a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. The New is its interpretation and fulfillment. If you hear the word, “Jesus” and think of a man other than yourself, you do not know him. The priests, rabbis, and ministers are looking for his coming, but they will look in vain. Jesus has already come or they couldn’t breathe. He is their life, but they do not know it. One day, however, he will awaken in them as the being in whom he awakens.

Try it. What I have told you tonight concerning the coming of Christ is the only foundation. You will never disprove my words, for I am not speaking from speculation or theory, but from experience. When this little garment I now wear is taken away, I will no longer be a part of this age, for I have awakened from this dream called life. And one day, when your dream is over, the series of events which I have just mapped out for you will unfold within you; and you, too, will awaken and return as the one being who began the venture.

Believe me. There is no other foundation, no other God other than he who began a good work in you, and he will bring you to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.

Now let us go into the silence.

NO OTHER GOD

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 5-10-1968

A god sent into the fires of experience is the only God upon whom to rely!

Paul knew this truth and urged the Corinthians to ‘Examine yourselves. Test yourselves whether you are holding to the faith.

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course you fail to meet the test.’ Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ as being in you, Paul invites everyone to test him. How would you go about testing yourself? By determining your desire and believing you have received it! In the 12th chapter of Mark, Jesus is made to say: ‘Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.’ Now, here is a condition placed upon you.

You must believe! You must dare to assume you are what you want to be and believe in that assumption! Then, if Jesus has not lied to you, your assumption will harden into fact!

Now, when you test Him, you, too must be faithful to the test. You have tested Him by giving Him a new model of yourself (or another) and he can’t be changing models every few minutes and produce anything but confusion! So you must assume the feeling of being the man (or woman) you want to be and having assumed it, you must remain faithful to that assumption so that he may have one mode from which to work. Then he can objectify it in your world. It is entirely up to you. I urge you to test him and when you find him faithful to his claim, you will have found the only God worthy of your attention!

Moses was told by God that when he went to the people of Israel and they asked: ‘What is his name?’ Moses was to say: ‘I am.’ He was to tell everyone that no other being has sent you, just I am. Then God continued, saying: ‘I have made myself known unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by my name ‘God Almighty,’ but by my name ‘the Lord’ I did not make myself known unto them.’ The name ‘Lord’ was known but not understood. You have heard it time and again: ‘I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior,’ but do you understand it? We have all heard the great confession of faith as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,’ but it is not understood.

When I say: ‘I am’ God is speaking. You hear my words and because you see the body I wear called ‘Neville’ you think I am saying ‘Neville is God,’ but I am saying: ‘I am.’ I am unconditioned consciousness believing myself to be a man of a certain race and nature, but before I say anything to complete a thought, my unconditioned I amness is God. Can you believe your ‘I am’ is God? Can you believe it enough to trust him? Let me share an experience of a friend who is here tonight.

My friend wrote, saying: ‘While sitting quietly waiting for your lecture to begin I imagined hearing a certain voice saying the words I wanted him to say. I heard it, and as I rested in that quiet acceptance I saw a paneled door and wondered what was behind it. Suddenly my curiosity was answered, for the door opened and out came a white pig. Does this have any significance?’

It has tremendous significance. In the universal language of symbolism, a pig is the symbol of Jesus, the Everlasting Sustainer. The Lost Language of Symbolism by Bayley states: ‘The female pig symbolizes the Sustainer. Pictured are two pigs with crowns. One has upwards to twenty little suckling pigs being simultaneously nourished, and under the figure is the IC of Jesus, the Everlasting Sustainer, and under the other figure is the clover leaf and CR of Christus Redemptor.’

My friend saw the symbol of his own wonderful human imagination, for that is Christ. If you imagine a state, remain faithful to it, and it externalizes itself, you have found the creator of the world for by him all things are made and without imagination is not anything made that is made. When you discover how to make something, you have found him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, your own wonderful human imagination, the Everlasting Sustainer of all life.

Many years ago in vision I was in a large coliseum filled with beautiful trees and flowers. In fact the entire plant world was represented there. It was closing time and I was alone. Looking down I saw a little pig at my feet. Wondering what I could feed him, I picked him up and placed him on a desk. Looking around, I gathered branches, leaves, and flowers to bed him down for the night, so that tomorrow an attendant could care for him.

Then the scene changed and the coliseum became a huge supermarket. Again I looked down to discover my pig. He had grown in the interval, but was still not well fed. Opening a bag of meal I started to mix it, when I called out to my daughter saying: ‘Vicki, bring me a package of grain that I may feed the pig while I mix the meal for him.’ Then she said: ‘Daddy what will I use for money?’ and I replied: ‘Everything here belongs to us. We don’t need money.’ She went over to a pile of goods which was arranged like a serpent, and instead of taking a package from the top she took one from the bottom, dislodging the entire pile causing it to tumble down, revealing a single candle, lit. Then I said: ‘Do not rebuild it. Now that the candle is lit it must remain so and never be covered again.’

My brother, Victor, appeared just then to inquire as to what I was doing and when I told him. he removed what appeared to be white, thick gravy from a bag and added three handfuls to my mixture, as I awoke hearing these words from the Books of Job and Proverbs: ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord and when his candle shone upon my head, by this light I walk through darkness.’

Hearing the words so clearly, I realized they had great significance, so I began to search out the symbolism of the pig and found it to mean the Everlasting Sustainer of the world. I had found my imagination to be Christ Jesus, but I had not fed him well. I had neglected to exercise my imagination when the opportunity arose. Every day presents an opportunity for me to take my imagination and use it lovingly on behalf of others. If I hear people call in distress and do nothing about it I am not feeding my pig. If I want something and do not exercise my imagination towards its fulfillment my pig goes hungry. Having heard that whatsoever I desire I will have if I believe I have received it, and knowing it came from Jesus Christ who is my own wonderful human imagination, and yet not doing it, I am not feeding my pig. It was tall and rangy, but he should have been much fatter; however he had survived in spite of my neglect. So I can say to my friend: when the door opened and the pig came out, you saw the symbol of the Everlasting Sustainer of the world. Now you have proved to your own satisfaction that imagination creates reality, for you said that what you did in the silence came to pass in a very short interval of time.

In the same letter, he wrote this: ‘In my vision you were looking above my head at the branches of a perfectly straight tree. It was about three or four years old and came out of the top of my skull.’ This is the gentleman I spoke of a week ago and told him that, although he has no memory of the experience, he has been born from above. Now there is no doubt, for no one can have the tree of life growing out of his skull and not be born from above. If the tree is four years old, then he has not brought back the memory of any of the events, but if it is three years old then he still has time, and may bring back the vision of the dove.

This is the tree of life spoken in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark: ‘When the eyes of the man who was born blind were opened, he said: ‘I see men as trees walking.” The tree of life, having turned down into generation, is turned around at the second birth, the birth from above. ‘Unless you are born from above you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of God.’ Having gone down and given birth to generations the tree is reversed, thereby giving birth to regeneration in an entirely different world.

My friend emphasized the word ‘straight’ in his letter. When Saul was blinded by the light the vision came to Ananias telling him to go to the street called ‘Straight’ to the house of Judas. There he would find a man from Tarsus, for ‘I have shown him in a vision that you would put your hand upon him and restore his sight.’ Maybe my friend’s sight will be restored, for he emphasized the word ‘straight’ in his description of the tree which grew out of his skull.

The first time I had this vision, I was moving with those majestic beings of the awakened society with their trees growing out of their brains, when I saw a prominent man in the British government stick a tree on his head from the outside and jump in the hope that his tree would support him. But each time he fell flat on his face with the tree falling off his head, and I awoke laughing.

Blake said it so beautifully:

‘The gods of the Earth and Sea
sought through Nature to find this tree,
but their search was all in vain,
there grows one in the human brain.’

The only tree of life you will ever find is growing there, and it always grows up, not down. When you look at a chart of mortal man (the man who dies) you will see a tree with its roots in the brain and all the veins, nerves, and arteries going down as an inverted tree. If you saw that same man after his rebirth you would see the tree turned up and growing in a majestic manner. Now I know that not everyone brings back the memory of rebirth and the discovery of the Son. I can’t tell you why, but my friend’s visions of the past few months lead me to the conclusion that he has had all of them, but had not remembered.

But tonight the subject is ‘No Other God.’ Do not turn to any other god for the only God is your own wonderful human imagination. There is no other. The day will come when He will unveil himself in you as you. You won’t see another, yet it takes his Son to unveil you. Only the Son knows who the Father is and only the Father knows who the Son is. The Son unveils you by calling you ‘Father.’ Only then do you know who you really are.

Now, if imagining proves itself in performance, does it matter what the world thinks? Test yourself, for there is no other God worthy of your attention. He is the god that you tested in the fires of experience and have proven true. He always proves himself in the testing and if he does that, what does it matter if the world rises in opposition and calls you insane for blaspheming? Let them say what they want to, it will not matter to you when you have found the only true God.

Abraham called upon the name, ‘the Lord, the Everlasting God,’ which is the divine definition of Jehovah. The word ‘Jehovah’ (translated ‘Lord’) is ‘YAD HE VAU HE’ [pron. Yod Hey Vav Hey] which means ‘I AM.’ And the word ‘olam’ (translated ‘everlasting eternity and the Word’) in the statement ‘God has put eternity (olam) into the mind of man yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end,’ also means ‘a youth; a stripling; a young man.’ These terms are given to David as he stands before the king, who inquires after his father. When Saul asked his lieutenant: ‘Whose son is that youth?’ the lieutenant replied: ‘As your soul liveth O king I cannot tell.’ Then he said: ‘Inquire whose son the stripling is,’ and no one knows. Then David brought the head of the giant Goliath to the king, who said: ‘Whose son are you, young man?’ and David replied: ‘I am the son of your servant, Jesse, the Bethlehemite.’ The word ‘Jesse’ means ‘I AM.’ That thought is put into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what is placed there until the end of the journey.

You have carried this innate wisdom in your bosom throughout the centuries you have traveled on your journey from heaven to heaven. You didn’t begin here in your mother’s womb. You came out from yourself – the Father – and entered this world of death to conquer it, and you will. In the end you will unveil yourself to yourself by your Son, David of Biblical fame. This is the story of scripture.

When scripture fulfills itself in you and you tell it, do not be surprised if no one believes you. This has been true throughout the centuries. In the days of the earliest Christians there was no New Testament, so when they spoke of scripture they referred only to the Old Testament. They had no plans to write a new one, but as the revelations were experienced they looked to the Old Testament for their meaning. The New Testament interprets the Old. Without the Old there would be no New, and the New without the Old is stupid, for the New is the fulfillment of the Old.

When Jesus said: ‘I have come to fulfill scripture’ there was no New Testament, so the only scripture he could fulfill was the Old Testament. He searches the old scriptures to find the passages that parallel his experiences. The pattern of salvation is contained in Man, which in the fullness of time erupts like a tree bearing fruit. All of the things said of Jesus Christ are contained within that pattern, and when you break that shell the first eruption is your birth from above. Then come the second, the third, and the fourth revelations, as the pattern fulfills itself within you.

In the meantime while you are here in the world of Caesar, take this challenge and test yourself. Do you want to be other than what you are? Do you want some friend to be other than what he is? Without his knowledge or consent you can represent him to yourself as you would like him to be, and to the degree that you are self-persuaded, he will become it. No power in the outer world can change him; only [through] you, by actually becoming that which you have convinced yourself he is, will the change occur. There is no other way because the world is yourself pushed out. There is only one God. ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One,’ not two. That one is ‘I am.’ I didn’t say, ‘We are,’ I said, ‘I am.’

No matter who you see in the world, they only bear witness to what you are. So, without their consent or knowledge you, by the act of complete concentration, can listen to the sound of a voice, feel the touch of a hand, and see beauty for ashes, as you exercise your talent, which is Christ. Then one day you will see your pig, and I hope it will be good and fat. Mine was just a runt when I first saw it, but the pig grows with use. It is only a symbol, but the symbol of the Everlasting Sustainer of the world.

So tonight please believe me. There is no other God other than he who is your own wonderful human imagination. Turn to any other and you have turned to a false God. Now, make no graven image of God. ‘I am’ has no face. Unnumbered artists have drawn pictures of what they conceive Jesus to be, but he has no face. He is simply ‘I am.’ But he is a person for you are a person and he has a Son. Calling himself the Father he says: ‘When you see me you see the Father.’ Well, he can’t be a Father unless there is a child. And when His child calls you, ‘my Lord’ he is saying: ‘You are my Father, Jesse,’ which means, ‘I am.’ ‘I AM’ is looking at his Son, David, and when you recognize your Son you will say to yourself: ‘Now I know who I AM.’

I am telling you that which is entirely new and yet as old as the faith of Abraham. Man cannot believe it because he has been led astray by strange concepts as to who Jesus Christ really is. Jesus Christ is God the Father and as a Father he must have a Son. That Son is David. This I know from experience. I did not read it in a book. I never heard it from the lips of a man. It came by revelation. The tree of life bloomed and bore its fruit in me and every tree has the same fruit (the same story). There is only one story to be experienced in all, so if it hasn’t happened in you, don’t be distressed, it will. I know in my friend’s case it has happened, but he hasn’t remembered it. All I can say to him is: pray that you will remember.

Read the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts carefully and you will see that Paul did not realize what was happening to him; yet he was selected because of his peculiar talents, to do what he did. Others who remembered were not selected, but Paul, violent against the early Christians – bringing them shackled into Jerusalem to be beaten, and even consenting to Stephen’s death – was chosen. When he came to the street called Straight he was blinded by the truth. The Lord picked him out because of his peculiar qualities. He was a man of intense power. Everything he did was intensified. The Lord took that same power which was used for evil and turned it around to be used for good. Paul did remember when his Son was unveiled, for he said: ‘When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me I did not consult with flesh and blood.’ He did not go up to Jerusalem to discuss the matter with others, no matter how seemingly powerful they were. It never occurred to Paul to get the permission of anyone. He simply went about doing exactly what he was told to do by the one who revealed his Son in him. And there is no one on record who revealed more than Paul. I am not saying that you are the one, but it is my real hope that you are. Nothing would please me more, because I am departing. My time is short and it is my hope that you will be selected to tell it.

But tonight believe me: your own wonderful human imagination is the one and only God, so put him to the test. Know what you want and let him create it for you. Search for and find the feeling that would be yours if things were as you desire them to be. Look at your world – would you see it differently? Would those in your world see a different you? Create that scene, catch the feeling of reality and don’t let go! Don’t forget what you saw and how you felt, for he who creates in you must have a model to work with. Don’t be the double-minded man Jesus speaks of: ‘The double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. He looks into the mirror of life and sees what he looks like, then he turns and forgets what he was like.’ Do not turn away from what you have just imagined and forget what you really look like, but persist in the new state. Remain faithful to it and let the one within you (who is Christ the Lord) externalize it, for you and He are one. I don’t mean you and the Lord, but you are the Lord. There is only God in this world and you will know one day that you are He.

Now let us go into the silence.

NORTH OF THE STRIP

December 22, 2013

Neville Goddard 11-24-1959

On this platform we believe that God is all Imagination and God is man (spiritual man, not the garment of skin he wears). Therefore man is all Imagination. We believe also that God, being the only creator, and God being man, then we are creators, that life itself is an activity of Imagination. The whole world in which we live is a world of Imagination. Tonight we hope to show it in such a manner that you will be encouraged to go out and prove it. Everyone can become what he or she desires to be, yet the real being is invisible and you see only its manifestation, for God is spirit, therefore man is spirit, and when we speak of spirit we mean imagining.

Here are two wonderful case histories, so follow closely and try to duplicate the technique. The lady who gave these to me does not differ from anyone here, for God is man. We are that man. I do not mean male/female, for these are the garments woven for man (generic man, which is God) to wear.

This lady says: “A year ago my husband decided to sell our home. I did not concern myself about it, for I knew from past experience (having sold two and bought two) that my home could not be sold until I stopped mentally sleeping in it. But I allowed him to exercise his right to sell it, for it is our home. For four months several real estate operators tried to sell it. It was not sold and they gave up. Soon after that we decided we would sell the house and get a bigger one really two units under one roof so that my mother and my aunt could stay with us, and there would be only one tax bill. I decided he was right and then I began to sleep in Imagination in the area of West Hollywood, and I slept thus for four successive nights. On the fifth day my husband stopped in to see a friend and met a stranger who wanted a home in the hills, and he brought him back to see our house. He walked through it once and bought it and paid our price. In ten days we had to get out and move in with my mother.

My husband likes to do things immediately and so he wanted a new house at once, but now there were four adults and we wanted a home with two separate living rooms, and yet within one area, and with space so no neighbor would be breathing down our necks. We also have ten cats, three dogs, and a parakeet. We needed a fenced place to protect the dogs. We made our wants known to all the real estate operators on the Strip, for I wanted to live north of the Strip. Everyone told us we were mad. The lady realtors laughed outright, and the men just looked sad. They said that such a place as we wanted did not exist in that area, and if it did they could get five times the price we offered, a price they said was ridiculous, I did not listen to their ridicule. I said: You have not heard me. That is the house we want, and the price. I also want it completely paneled on the inside. Now they knew we were mad!

This lady began sleeping in her Imagination in such a house. Then one day one of the agents said to another: Show her the place on King’s Road. (That was the area where she wanted her house.) The other said: You know the old lady would never split it. So then this lady said: Then lets go see it for laughs. The agents were reluctant, but they went. They turned into the private road and then the lady of the house took them through the place. There was this huge twenty-five foot room. It was paneled in redwood and the lady who wanted to buy said: I have never seen a more beautiful [room], even in a dream. The house was on two acres and was like two houses under one roof. There was a pool, but this lady didnt want a pool, only the house. After looking at the grounds and going back into the house, she stood on a balcony opening out of the dining room and looked down into the living room and saw her husband standing there by the fireplace with his pipe and with a look of complete satisfaction on his face. Then they all returned to the agents office, and the ladys husband said: Lets make them an offer. One lady agent said: I will lose my lunch! and the other said: Forget it! And then this ladys husband grew angry (which he seldom did) and hit the desk and said: Is it not your business to make the offer we suggest? Then make it! A third agent spoke up and said: Go slowly, for I have known that old womans husband to make a real estate operator wish he was dead.

However, they agreed to make the offer, the lady continued. We returned home and that night after we went to bed, having seen the house in Imagination, I stood on this same balcony above the living room and held onto its railing and looked again at my husband standing by the fireplace. And then she fell asleep in that imaginary act. Next day the phone rang and the agent said: You have bought yourself a house! The owners split the property in the middle and they got the house and one acre, just what they wanted and they got it at the price they had offered. She says: After twelve days of sleeping in a dream house we bought it, and are now going to live in a home that the realtors said did not exist. Our first house was sold after four days of sleeping elsewhere and we sold it without an agent and kept the five per cent commission in the family. A total stranger walked through it once and bought it.

That is how God creates. That is how you create if you know who you are, for you are God. You are not some little worm. They are now meeting in Chicago at this convention to tell us how we came from a worm, and that we are now evolving. God is not evolving. He creates out of nothing. He does not make something and hope He had the intelligence to make it better. Read it in the revealing word of God, the Bible. It is all created and what we call the animal world (which we say preceded us) is man himself pushed out, and as man is changing, so do the animals of the world change.

The whole vast world on the outside is dead, and man makes it alive. I know from my mystical experiences. I know that when I freeze an activity within me, it freezes outwardly, and when I started it again within me, it started. This lady did not sell the first house until she had stopped sleeping in it. And then, when she decided on a larger house (in spite of her problem of four adults, cats and dogs, and special privacy and north of the strip) she found it. I say you can be what you want to be and you need no preparation other than your desire. This lady was a better agent than the real estate men who could not sell her house in four months, and she kept the five per cent. She wanted to do so [and] she did it, because she is all Imagination. But you will not know it until you prove it as she did.

I tell her there is nothing impossible to her, and there is nothing impossible to you, for God became man that man may become God. God is the only actor. God alone acts in all existing beings and men. (Blake) If I re-act, that is the passive or negative side, called Satan, but if I act that is called God or Christ. If I go home tonight and conceive a scene that implies the fulfillment of my dream and then lose myself in it, I know that no power in the world can stop its coming into being.

Today brought me a letter asking for help. I do not need to be next door to help another. There is no separation or time without consent. You make this work for another, no matter where they are. This letter was from New York, telling me about a fine doctor there. He got these growths on his face and feared they might be malignant, and then it was found that he had Parkinsons disease. This friend wrote me to tell me about it, and he said: Can you do anything when you are so far away? I am not 3,000 miles away, for everything is within me. I brought this doctor, in Imagination, before me and I put my hand on his face. I put it on a face that had no lumps. I felt only smooth skin. And then he and I walked together and he did not stumble; he walked like a well man would walk. That is what I did.

Now comes this letter telling me that me that something has happened within him. These lumps are gone and he is no longer shaking and he now can go to his office again. Yet as a doctor he knows his condition is incurable. It is not unless he thinks so. If I had seemingly failed with him it would not matter, for I would still be exercising my wonderful talent. If that next letter had said if he had died it still would not mean I failed, for there are worlds within worlds, and God cannot fail. All we are called on to do, is to imagine and then let it be true. I cannot concern myself with what the doctors say. We are not little worms; we are of God, for God became his image and made [it] alive and it became a living soul, and then he transformed it into a life-giving spirit. But if you do not become a life-giving spirit, you do not know you are the cause of the livingness of your world. And then you cannot change it.

Here is another story from the lady who bought the house: Going into a certain restaurant she saw some unusual rose-colored water glasses, and she asked if she could buy them. Both the waiter and the hostess said it would be impossible for her to do business with the person who did the buying for the restaurant, as she was such an unpleasant person. Also, they said the glasses were manufactured in the east and the supply was very limited. The lady went home, but every day she saw those glasses on her table eight of them. A month later she and her mother were again in the restaurant, and there was [a] new hostess, who introduced herself and then brought up the subject of the glasses and said she had heard the buyer would not sell any of them. And then she smiled and excused herself, returning in a moment with a box, which she gave to this lady. In it were not only eight glasses but twice that number. And they were without charge. Jehovahs gifts are without price. She was willing to pay even an excessive price for the glasses, but she got them as a gift.

If you know what you want in this world you can get it. And let no one tell you that you are acquisitive. Those who tell you that would not mind having the same thing for themselves. So be completely disinterested in what people say and go out and live a full, wonderful, rich life, for what you want to do you can do if you know who you are. You are all Imagination and Imagination is God, and only God creates.

This lady learned to use the Western Gate closed in most of us which is touch. That was her secret. She saw what her husband looked like standing by the fireplace the night she recreated the scene but she held onto the balcony with her hand to prove it to herself that she was there.

So what would you desire? I cannot stress too much the use of touch or the Western Gate. I have seen people take imaginary paychecks and touch them. They had brought the other senses of seeing, and hearing comments, etc. but when they had brought the sense of touch it worked like a charm, for when you bring touch you open the closed Western Gate and then nothing seems impossible. If I could snuggle into a bed 10,000 miles away and then view my world from that place, I would gravitate there. For I am all Imagination, so I must be where I am in Imagination. Though I am physically here, if I view my world from that other place I am there, and if anyone is a sensitive they will be able to see me there. I have [been] seen in points of space when I was physically here but desired to be seen there. I am where I am in Imagination, so if I imagine I am the person I want to be and walk in that state as though it were true, then everything in the world will rush to make it so. If I would only live in Imagination as I desire to live in the flesh, then everything that seems detached will be joined to make it real.

Try it in your office, and if things are not right or as they ought to be, then you assume that this person is acting as he should and you hear the conversation and what they would say if they were now the kind of individual you want them to be. And if they act tomorrow as you imagined they are acting, then where is reality? It will come to you some day.

When weary man enters his cave
then he meets his Savior in the grave.
Some find a female garment there
and some a male woven with care.
(Blake)

But that is not man. God is the reality, and male and female is the garment. This (the body) is the cave, and this is also the grave of which Blake speaks. This is where God laid himself down. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life I now live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. So it is all woven within me, for God is the eternal man and I am he. He weaves himself into us for educative purposes and in my case it is male, but that is not man. He wears garments of male and female, but that is not man. And then Blake turns to Satan:

Oh Satan, true thou art a dunce;
thou canst not tell the garment from the man.

The day will come when you will see this fabulous world of garments frozen, but the man you do not see, for you are that man. And you become aware of what you want and then you see the whole world is infinite response to you. So, whatever you activate, you get the response. The world has to respond after I start the action within me.

Tonight you take your dream and make it a noble one, and create a scene that would imply its fulfillment of your dream, and open that Western Gate, which is touch. There is one man here who made deposits (mental ones) at his bank. You know the story of Archie Franklin. He mentally went into two different banks and asked for his balance and heard what was said to him. He did it three times a day for two months. Then he went to Caliente and returned with $32,000. What he won was $3.00 more than the bank deposit he had mentally added up. I do not say go to Caliente, but I say put yourselves in that same state and do not let someone tell you it is not spiritual, for while they are saying that, they are already wondering if they can borrow some of that check when you get it.

Everything in this world is God’s creation and God is all Imagination. Even the clothes we wear, the chairs we are sitting on, were once imagined and then brought into being. Let no one tell you this is wrong. Those who tell you to kill out desire have not gone far enough, for if I wanted to kill desire I would have to start with the desire not to desire, and where would [I] go? How far?

So, go out and do what you want to do and fulfill your dreams. Someone without academic background is telling you this. I am going out on a limb to tell you that everything in the Bible is true on a higher level, but it is revealed figuratively, and man confused literal truth with metaphor. I do not crawl on my belly and no little serpent spoke to me, as it says in Genesis; yet what is meant is true in metaphor. The serpent was called the most subtle of all the creatures and it represents the wisdom of man, who takes all his arts and religions for his own glamour and dedicates them to the creator. And then comes one who never went to any school (Blake) and shows them reality. And now those who thought themselves so wise are figuratively crawling on their bellies in the presence of such as he. In the Bible things are told on a higher level and told in metaphor, but I know from mystical experience things I could not have found in any book.

The statement: You must be born from above or you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven is an example. It is literally true, but it is told in metaphor. The rich young man said: How is it possible to again enter my mothers womb and be born a second time? But the womb is below and not above. It is speaking of the birth of the second man, the spiritual man. From Genesis right to the end of the Book, it says that God created all things and that he said: It is good. Seven times he repeats: It is good − the perfect number. One day you will see the whole vast world, and you will say: It is good! And you will animate it. I know everything depends on the activity taking place in MAN − and spell it with large letters, for the garments are male-female. You are MAN, this generic man that is God. The whole vast world is man pushed out. Not a man, but MAN. All that you behold though it seems to be without, it is within, in your own wonderful Imagination of which this vegetative world is but a shadow. It is hard at this stage to think that your world is a shadow, and it is cast by you and you are activating it.

When you dream, do not think that because there seems not a fact to support it, it cannot come. It will come, so dream nobly. If you want fame, have it. But I would suggest that you suggest to yourself that you are awakening and can see this frozen wonderful world and you as the activator. I hope many of you have the desire to do what I am doing and will go out and tell this. First prove it to yourselves. Learn the art of repentance, which means a change of mind. Try it, and try it again, and prove that a change in you will produce an outer change. Go out and prove it and then tell others. Imagine what you want to imagine and continue to imagine until you are confronted with it. It does not matter what your senses tell you; if you learn to live by this you will not fail.

Bear in mind that this, the body, is only a garment and one day you will take it off. But you are invisible, and when you [are] completely awakened, you join the Divine Society and become one of the Gods who create. Remember that every moment of time God is begetting himself in us and you cannot fail.

Now let us go into the silence.

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