Neville Goddard—Edited by Jan McKee
I think you’re all aware that this is the most dramatic week in Christendom and yet I dare say that not an nth part of one percent of those who call themselves Christians really understand what it is all about. It’s the story of the fulfillment of God’s purpose. That’s the week, the triumphant march into Jerusalem, the crucifixion and then the resurrection. And it’s told as though it took place on earth. That’s how the story is told. For as Tennyson said, “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So, man cannot think abstractly so it’s told in the form of a story. And man has mistaken the story for the reality. Let us now look to see who the one is spoken of in scripture. They say his name is Jesus. You may not believe me but I’ll tell you who Jesus is. Say, “I Am,” that’s Jesus. Don’t say, I am man or John or Peter or anything, just I Am. That’s Jesus. That’s God. That’s the Lord God Jehovah. The crucifixion is already over. It was in the beginning of time, a deliberate act on the part of God – all over. The resurrection took place and is taking place and will continue until everyone is awake. So, you say, “I Am,” that’s Jesus.
Now, it begins with the march. Mark tells us that He took the twelve and then He walked ahead of them. The way Mark states it, it is as if he were one whom a dream had possessed and who went forward to fulfill all that the prophets had foretold. For he said, “I have come to fulfill scripture.” The only purpose. Now, not a man on the outside fulfilling scripture. This one, which is God, is buried in you when you say, “I am.” You may not be aware of it aside from dreaming the dream of life which is this. He also is dreaming the fulfillment of His purpose. And the day will come, you are going to reproduce within yourself all that is said in scripture concerning Jesus. Then you will know who Jesus is. It is said that he told them, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, and all that was written of the son of man by the prophets will be accomplished.” And the evangelist adds, “They understood none of these things.” This saying was hid from them and they did not grasp what was said. Only the Risen Lord can interpret scripture. Only His finger could trace the ambiguous phrases of scripture and extract their heavenly meaning. It’s a pattern in scripture. That only when He rises in you as you, can you take the Old Testament and simply follow the pattern. You know what the pattern is because you’ve experienced it. And the whole thing unfolds and the whole thing is told you in the Old Testament. But it’s a pattern. It’s told you as though it’s history, ancient history. It’s divine history and that history, not page after page, but a pattern goes through the entire thing and then that pattern unfolds within you. And when it unfolds within you, you actually gain that certainty that, “I Am He.” There is no other way you’ll ever know it until it unfolds within you.
Now, God came and comes into human history. And now we’re going to give Him a name – in the person of Jesus, but the Jesus in you, in me, in every child born of woman. That’s the only Jesus in eternity. I Am that Jesus. Well, now He’s a father. When God is born within you, for that’s the beginning of it all, you first awaken within you and you do not know you are God. You only know that you have awakened from the most profound sleep ever and it seemed like eternity. You did not awake on the bed where you fell asleep the night before. You awoke in a tomb and the tomb is your skull. And you awake within your skull and you’re all alone with no one present. But you have a built-in innate knowledge what to do. And you do it and you come out of your skull as a child comes out of the womb of woman. But you’re coming out of your own skull and you pull yourself out of your own skull. And the imagery of scripture concerning the birth of God surrounds you, including the little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and three witnesses to the event. So, you’re told, “When they came, they saw the heavenly being but Him they did not see.” It’s the birth of God. God actually took upon Himself the limit of contraction, which is man. Now He is born, the birth being an expansion. There is no limit to expansion. God is forever expanding and then, at a moment of expansion, He then has a new venture of contraction. Then He expands beyond what He was. Then He contracts. Then He expands beyond what He was and that is God’s play. There is no limit to expansion. He puts a limit to contraction. The limit is man.
So, when you break the tomb, you come out and you are God. Therefore, no one can see you. The heavenly hosts who were present to witness the event can’t see you, for you are spirit; you are God. But you see them and you see the babe and you see everything round about you just as described in Luke and Matthew. But you do not know that you are God. That comes later, and you’ll not in eternity know you are God until God’s son calls you Father. And God’s son, the Christ of Scripture, is not Jesus. It’s David. Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah in you when you say, “I Am.” That’s Jesus. That’s not David. Who then is Christ? The Son of God. David then comes and when David comes, there is no uncertainty as to who you are. For he calls you Father. And before he utters the word Father, you know you are his Father. And he knows he is your son. And this relationship is now what every heart is aching for. When this is established by an actual experience, the drama is over. Everything is over that you came to perform — to find the son who, in turn, will reveal you as God the Father. For He is sound asleep in humanity and man doesn’t know that he is God. And when he is born from above, he still doesn’t know he is God. And not in eternity can he find out who he is until the son appears.
So, we are told in Scripture, “No one knows who the son is except the Father and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom He chooses to reveal Him.” So, hey do it because “They know neither my Father nor Me. Had they known my Father, they would have known me also. But they know neither My Father nor Me.” So, you find, you’ve got to actually feel between the words. For He’s speaking one moment as Father and then speaking, in another moment as Son. It’s a mystery and how are you going to tell it unless you tell it in the form of a story that it may enter in at lowly doors.
But man, hearing the story, learns to feel behind the story and feel what it’s trying to convey. But when you actually experience the story, then you know the mystery. It’s the mystery that everyone one day will unfold within himself and he’ll know that he is God. So this is what confronts man this week as it’s dramatized but not told. For they do not know it. They do not know the story. Let me turn now to the 55th Chapter of Isaiah. “I will make a covenant with you.” Now he’s speaking to all of us, “I will make a covenant with you,” and this is his covenant, “my steadfast, sure love for David – I have made him a witness to the peoples.” That is my witness to the peoples. Now what is he going to witness? The truth of God’s word. So God’s word is Scripture and the Scripture spoken of was the Old Testament, “and the word is truth,” I make him now a witness to the people and He has my steadfast and sure love forever. Now, “That is my covenant with you,” said the Lord to us. We turn now to the trial, and here we find one called Jesus standing before Pilot, and he turns to Pilot and he said, “For this I was born. And for this I came into the world to bear witness to the truth,” Now He tells you He is not of this world, “unless you are born form above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He’s not speaking of the birth from the womb of a woman in spite of all the priesthoods of the world. He is speaking of an entirely different birth, “born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” He said, “I am from above, you are from below.” Now, He’s not speaking to you, the being who is God. He is speaking to this body here. This is from below. This came out of the womb of my mother. But there is that in me which is “I Am” that no woman can bear. That must be born from above. It is now entombed in my skull, entombed in your skull. But the skull of which I speak is a divine skull containing all of us. That is the skull. And it is said in the 87th Psalm, “And this one was born here and that one was born there.” All within the one grand skull and it’s called Zion – another name for Jerusalem. So, when Paul said, “The Jerusalem from above is our mother and she bears children into liberty.” The Jerusalem from below bears them into slavery.
Well, my physical mother bearing her ten children that she raised, she wove garments of flesh. And these garments of flesh came from below, from her womb into slavery. For we’re all slaves of the bodies that we wear. But housed within that, from above, there is another Jerusalem and she is our mother who bears us into liberty, into freedom. You come out of your own skull, that divine skull. And you’re set free. Well, then you come into this world to bear witness to what? To the truth. So, “I made him a witness to all the peoples.” Well, what is he going to witness now? The truth of Scripture, that God is a Father and that He did say to me, “I will tell of the decree of the lord,” said David in the 2nd Psalm. “He said unto me, thou art my Son. Today I have begotten thee.” If Scripture cannot be broken, what other Son are you holding up now before me that I may see? You may see all the hallucinations in the world as artists have painted dozens and dozens of different portraits of one they call Jesus. And they said they saw him. Ask the artist, “When you saw him in your imagination and you painted on the canvass or you sculpted, did you know then you’re looking at the Son of God.” If they say, “yes,” well then you must know that you are God. Because no one can see the Son but the Father and no one knows the Son but the Father. Therefore, if you are looking at the Son of God and only God can see the Son, well then you must be God. What are they going to say to that? And Scripture cannot be broken. Read it in the 11th Chapter of the Book of Matthew. “No one knows who the Son is except the Father and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom He chooses to reveal Him.
So, I know in my own case, raised in the Christian faith as I was, and I call myself a Christian from my own personal experience of this great mystery, but I did not know from my mother’s knee or in my school (because we had Bible reading and Bible study when I was a child, it was part of our schooling). We had to go to Sunday School. I was taught the Bible, raised with the Bible. And there it is but I didn’t see it and my teachers didn’t see it. My mother didn’t see it; my father didn’t see it, and no one that I ever met ever saw it, so I didn’t know it until it happened. It happened in me and then I could not then make it fit in with what they taught me. I had to go back and re-read Scripture and there the whole pattern was there all along but only the Risen Christ can interpret Scripture. Only when David rises within me and calls me Father. Now, listen to the words, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Father.” What time has fully come? When you have borne the great fardel, the great load, the burden the allotted span. Not before you’ve borne it the allotted span can He come. And when you get to the end of the road and you’ve borne that burden, then the spirit of His Son comes into you and here he rises in you. You resurrect your own son and that son is God’s Son; therefore, you are God.
That’s when you gain the certainty that you are God. Yet, while you wear the little garment, you are still in a straight jacket. And all you can do while you wear it is to tell it. Try to clarify the atmosphere and scrape off the barnacles from the ship that gathers them over the centuries. Far from belittling Jesus, I have placed Him where He actually is. He is God. He is not the Son of God. He is God. He is the Lord, a symbol of God, that you may say, but He wasn’t born of any woman. The only woman of whom He was born, “I Am.” That’s the Jerusalem from above. “I am Mary and birth to Christ must give if I in blessedness for now and ever more would live.” So each must bring forth the Son and it’s the same Son. Only one Son. And when you look at Him, no uncertainty; no one need tell you anything. There you are, looking at your Son as though memory has now returned and you have suffered from total amnesia up to this moment in time and suddenly, your memory returns and you know who you are. You’re God, the Father.
It’s going to happen to every child born of woman. Not one will be lost. Not one. I don’t care if you’re a moron today, if you’re brainless. That’s only a temporary experience in this world. That brain that you have really, the true brain, is not really addled at all. That’s only some distorted aspect of life for a little while. Maybe you’ll go through life, spending fifty, sixty years in some distorted brain, but it’s still not the brain of which I speak. Not that divine brain. If your child is not a balanced child, a demented child, I know it’s a hard thing to bring up and a hard thing to face in life, but that’s not your responsibility. That little thing there that you call your child that is demented, behind it all, behind that mask it is part of the burden that it bears, is the perfect being that is Jesus and that Jesus in there is, “I Am.” It was never tarnished. It was never soiled, no matter what it has done in the world, it was never soiled. And one day, it will awake. And when it awakes, it comes out of the tomb. So Paul could say, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, not I. Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” And that Son is David.
Listen to the words, “I have found in David, the Son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all my will.” Well, the word “Jesse” means “Jehovah exists.” That’s what the word means. So Jesse is the Father. Whose Father? David’s Father. And who is Jesse? Jehovah. And who is Jesus? Jehovah. He is the Lord. But no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And who is the Holy Spirit? The remembrancer. When the Son stands before you and memory returns and you are his Father and He is your Son, then only by this return of memory will you ever know. And so, no one can say that Jesus is Lord and Jesus is the Father. For in spirit, David called him, “my Lord.” Why did he call him, my Lord? Well, that’s a title of Father. So he called Jesus, My Lord. He is the I Am in you, the I Am in every being in this world. So, we’ll go up to Jerusalem and all that was actually written about the son of man, which is the title that he used of self, will now be accomplished. So, I’m going up to Jerusalem, because everything is going to happen in the skull. That’s where Jerusalem is, the Jerusalem above. I’m going up to Jerusalem, not down. And all things said of the Son of man will now be accomplished. So, he goes up and the whole thing unfolds within the skull.
That’s where you awake. That’s where you explode. When David comes out, it’s an explosion in your head as though you had put some dynamite to your head and the whole thing explodes. And when it all settles, here stands David before you. He was buried in you. And when he said to me, “I laid myself down within you to sleep,” who said that? The depths of my own soul, the Lord said that. “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and I knew exactly what he was dreaming. He’s dreaming that He’s I. And when the dream is over, we aren’t two. We are one. No longer will he simply treat me as something on the outside, an emanation of His. No more the emanation, He cleaves to me and we become one being. So when a man leaves this world, his father, his mother, and cleaves to his wife, and this is the wife, the emanation of God. Yet, though His emanation, it’s his wife until the dream is over. When the sleep is over, we aren’t two. We’re one. And I know that when I awoke within me, I wondered, “How did I get here? Who put me here?” For this is a tomb. This s a sepulcher and only one who thought me dead could have put me here. For this is a tomb and only the dead are placed in tombs. So someone, I didn’t realize then, that it was a deliberate act on my own part.
So, you’re told in the 10th Chapter of John, “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.” And yet, over the centuries, we have condemned a race of people for taking away the life of one who never, as an individual, walked the face of this earth. He is in man or you couldn’t even breathe. He’s not on the outside of man that someone can take his life. He is in man. He’s the breath of man, the spirit of man, the I Amness of man, man’s own wonderful human imagination. That is Jesus. That’s God. And so to blame a race of people for doing what no one ever did, listen to the Bible, the 10th Chapter, “No one takes away my life. I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. For I am the resurrection and the life.” So he entered death’s door, the human skull, and laid down in the grave of man and there he dreams the dream of life, and this is the dream of life. And one day, it comes to the end and he awakes. Where? In the tomb where he entered to find himself there. It was a long dream, thousands and thousands of years he has been dreaming this dream. You didn’t begin in your mother’s womb seventy years ago or whatever year you may be. That’s only a garment woven for you. You are eternal. You have no beginning and you have no end.
Never was there a time when you were not. Nor shall there ever come a time when you shall cease to be. Beginnings and ends are all dreams. It seems so real, but they’re all dreams. But you have no beginning, no end. You are and that being is called in Scripture, God the Father.
But, may I tell you something, you will not actually feel, I am Jesus, I am Father. That’s not what you feel. You don’t feel Jesus. You don’t feel God. You don’t feel Jehovah. These are names given by man. But what you do feel is Father. So the great revelation of the New Testament is God is Father. That is the foundation of the entire thing. If you were not a father, then there is no child. So the relationship of father/son is fundamental to the Christian faith. Without the Son, there would not be a Father. And if there is a Father, there must be a Son. And it’s a search for the Son. And when the Son is found, the Father knows who He is. But not until the Son is resurrected. So, in the Old Testament, in the 2nd Psalm, the 16th Psalm, and the 110th Psalm, they are identified with resurrection. In the 16th Psalm, David is speaking and is made to say, “Thou wouldst not leave my soul in Hell.” In confidence, he knows he would not be left in Hell, that he would be raised up. Because, “I will not take my steadfast, sure love from David.” That’s my covenant with the peoples. I have made him a witness to all the peoples. I will not take my love from him. So, he dies and is buried but I will raise him up. And when the Father raises up the Son then the smile is on his face because his Son has returned from the grave. And David is the eternal Son of God, the resultant state of all the experiences that you, as a man, which is God as man, experience in this world. So God became as I am that I may be as He is.
This is the story of scripture and it’s all in the Old Testament but not understood. There it is, a blueprint. It’s an adumbration. The New interprets the Old, not the other way around. And when it happens in you, well, what a joy. I can’t tell anyone the emotion that possesses you and then you really are like one possessed. You walk in the dream of what happened and you can’t think of anything but, really. You may be diverted for a little while, a small party. A big one would bore you. A few friends, yes. A large crowd, no. It doesn’t interest you. A dinner party of a few chosen friends, yes. But to have an enormous crowd, no that’s nothing more than noise. Everyone is trying to, well, monopolize the entire picture. But a few chosen friends for a party, a delightful evening with words where you are discussing reality, wonderful. But after it happens to you, may I tell you, you can’t think of anything but. And your dreams are not dreams any more. Your nights are not what they were prior to that waking. You wake and it’s entirely different. And I can’t explain to anyone who wakes every day of their life after a night of good sleep, that that waking in the morning doesn’t compare to this. It’s something entirely different, as though you had never awakened before in your life. That’s what actually you feel like. Something entirely different. And you look at all these things round about you and here, a thousand years , two thousand years, three thousand years ago, it was written there and it was all about you and you didn’t know it.
So we’re going to go up now to Jerusalem, said he, “and all that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be fulfilled.” All will be accomplished. Then he began to explain to them Scripture and said, “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.” Now this coming Friday, if you do go to part of the service, you will hear the words on the cross. Every one is taken from the Old Testament. And you will know who you are in that sense. They are the words of David. For David is going to commit himself now to his Father. “Into thy hands, I commit my spirit.” This is now the 31s Psalm. “Thou hast redeemed me, Oh Lord, Faithful God,” yet that is the final cry on the cross when you read it in this little Book of Luke. “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And he commits it into the hands of the Father. He calls him now Father, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And these are the identical words of David in the 31st Psalm. Now here, the entire thing unfolds within man.
But, something was said to me just before I took the platform by a very dear friend of mine who is here tonight although he will admit to me and to everyone in the world, he is one hundred and one percent American but he cannot deny the fact that he has one hundred and one percent of the Irish background in him too. So, he gave me the definition of an Irishman. An Irishman is one who does not know what he wants and there will be no peace on earth until he finds it. Not exactly his words; he told it much better than that, but that’s the essence of it. He does not know what he wants and there will be no peace on earth until he finds it. Well, that’s the whole vast world. Ask, what do you want. He doesn’t really know what he wants because what everyone wants is to find the Father and you can’t find the Father without the Son. Basically, we’re trying to find the cause of the phenomenon of life. What makes things happen in my world? He told me, “You know, years ago,” before he met me, “he had these sorts of daydreams of, well, talking to a crowd – maybe going on radio, maybe on T.V.” Here out of the blue, someone came into his restaurant in Ojai and offered him a series of lectures here, in New Mexico, possibly sending him into Arizona. She can arrange other things for him, and the whole thing is done. But he remembered these daydreams.
Most of us don’t remember and when we are confronted with our own harvest, we deny it’s our harvest. So, I tell you there is no such thing as an accident in this world. No. There is no such thing as a natural cause. Every natural effect has a spiritual cause, that is, an imaginal cause and not a natural. A natural only seems. It is a delusion of our fading memory. We can’t remember when we set it in motion. He remembers that long before he met me in San Francisco, that this happened back East, this daydream of his. And now, suddenly out of the nowhere a seeming stranger comes into his world, listening to him in his restaurant , carried away with what he had to say and the way he said it and is moved to arrange this thing for him. He doesn’t have to lift a finger to do it. It all will be done for him.
So, I say, dream noble dreams, wonderful dreams. If they don’t come to pass tonight, tomorrow, or next week, you keep on dreaming them. But try to put yourself into the dream as though it’s taking place and try to live in it. Be possessed by the dream and see the whole thing unfold within you in this world of Caesar, always bearing in mind, the real dream. It must come to an end only when it’s fulfilled. And the story is the fulfillment when you awake. For resurrection is waking. It’s not gathering dead bones together and putting flesh on it. It’s simply awakening. You are sound asleep and you awaken like a man out of a deep, deep sleep to find yourself in a tomb. But you have the strength to break the bonds of that tomb and to come out of that tomb. And when they come to search for the body, they have taken away the body. They only knew you by reason of the body that you wore and that’s taken away and they can’t see you. “Him they could not see.” But he was fully aware of everyone round about him. And, here, all the symbolism of Scripture is unfolding before him. And he is the central character in the entire drama. They’re talking about him. They aren’t talking about Jesus. They’re talking about you. You are individualized and you tend forever and forever toward ever greater individualization. They didn’t call me by any other name. They didn’t call me God. Didn’t call me Lord, didn’t call me Jesus. They spoke of me as Neville. It’s Neville’s baby. I was aware of being “I.” No loss of identify whatsoever. But then when David comes, here is Neville. In this century I was born, the year 1905. Here we have a recorded, so-called history, of one born 1000 years B.C. and he stands before me and I know I’m his father. And here we have words put into his mouth that the Lord said to him, ‘You are my son.” And I know that I am his Father and only then did I gain the certainty as to whom I am.
So, you will not lose your identity, yet you are God the Father. It is Father that is being revealed, the sweetest name there is in Scripture. He is a loving Father, may I tell you, in spite of all the pain you’ve gone through and all the horrors of the world. For this is a nightmare. Can’t confine it only to the night; it’s a daymare too with most people. So, I tell you, at the end – it’s not a reward – it’s simply victory. You have plotted and planned the whole thing before you entered the tomb. You prepared a way for your own return to whom? To yourself. I came out from the Father and I came into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and I’m returning to the father. And that’s the story of this week. So as far as Friday goes, Good Friday, save your tears. The crucifixion is over. And it was a voluntary act on your part, which is God’s part. You laid yourself down in a tomb for the purpose of dreaming the dream of life. And in that dream, you suffered. You knew you would. As you’re told in the 24th Chapter of the Book of Luke, again you’re told it in the 18th, for that matter. But the 24th,”Oh foolish men and slow of heart to understand all that the prophets have written and said about the Christ. Was it not necessary that Christ suffer these things and then enter into his glory.” It’s part of the training. These are the furnaces. “I tried you in the furnaces of affliction.” Why? 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.” And my name is Father. That’s my name. That’s my name. That’s the name truly that is God’s name in the world. And so the word “God” which makes the mind jump on the outside is not truly the name. You take the word “Eloheim” and we translate it “God.” Take the word, “Jod He Vau He” and translate that “Lord.” But the name that is revealed is Father. That’s who this being is. This creative being is Father. And everyone is in search of the Father.
And one day, He’s going to find the only one who can reveal Him as Father. And when He finds Him, He finds His own Son David. Now that will come as an awful shock to the majority of people in the world. And I would not take back one little iota. It’s true. I’m not speculating. I’m telling you exactly what I have experienced. It’s not theory with me. This is all that I know from my own personal experience. It was always there in that Book called the Bible but I had not experienced it so I couldn’t see it. “You have eyes and you see not. And you have ears and you hear not.” Because they’re not yet bored. And it takes the furnaces to bore these eyes for you and to bore the mouth for you, to bore the ears for you that you may experience Scripture and then the whole thing unfolds within you.
It’s all about you because it’s all about God and you are God asleep. And the day is coming and may it not be too long when He will awake in you as you. And then you will find your Son that Scripture claims to be God’s Son. And because Scripture claims it is God’s Son and you know it’s your Son, then you must be God. That’s the story of the Bible.
Now let us go into the silence.
