Author: Reality Hacker Co.

Neville Goddard—1954

This morning’s subject is “The Pruning Shears of Revision”. I firmly believe that if you will wisely and daily use the pruning shears of revision that you will find there is no objective beyond your ability to realize. And I mean that seriously, no objective beyond your ability to realize.

When I was a boy of seven, a lady said to me, “I have had a vision concerning you. I’ll make it now very, very clear to you–I do not know what it is you are going to do, but I’ve been shown you will do something that through the centuries after you are gone man will not undo it. I can see it and through the centuries you will grow in stature long after you have gone. And then three men will be mentioned in hundreds of years to come and you will be one of the three when something is discussed that was done for man.”

I feel that this morning’s subject that this could be it, that if I never said another word, and you heard it and believed it, and really used it, this would be the planting that would spread from us here that tomorrow could not undo. For it is magic, this pruning shears of revision. It really is not only the achievement of objectives, but if you do it daily, it will awaken in you the spirit of Jesus, which is continual forgiveness of sin.

In this teaching the sinner should always go free; you will never condemn him, for when the spirit is awake in you you will realize in him there is no condemnation, only forgiveness, and forgiveness is not as man of the world thinks when he omits the actual execution of his revenge. What we mean by forgiveness the identification of the other that we would forgive with the ideal that other wants to embody in the world. And so we do to him what we expect or would like the world to do to us. So whatever I myself would like to embody that is the vision that I must hold of every man that I meet in my world; that no man is to be discarded, every man is to be redeemed, and my life is the process whereby that redemption is brought about. And I do it by simply identifying the other with the ideal I want to externalize in my world.

Now we will go back to the 2nd of Genesis. It is said “And God placed man in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Now when you read the story you think it happened thousands of years ago. I have come to tell you it is now. You are now in the garden of Eden and you think you are shut out or banished. You are in it, and the garden is your mind, but you need–like every gardener–you need pruning shears. For you have slept, as you are told in that second chapter; having slept, weeds have appeared in the garden and the weeds are revealing themselves by the conditions and the circumstances of life. For your garden is always projecting itself on the screen of space, and you can see by looking carefully at your world what you allow to grow in the garden of God. But you have a mission, you have a purpose, it is not to amass a fortune–you can do it if you want to–it’s not to be famous, it is not to be some mighty power, but simply to tend the garden of God. That’s your purpose. You are placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it, that only the lovely things grow in the garden of God.

Now every man in the world is rooted in you who look out and see that world. Every man is rooted in me; he ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. Because he is rooted in me he cannot bear other than the nature the root allows. So he is in me and any changes desired in the outer world can be brought about only if I change the source of the thing I see growing in my world.

“You see yonder fields?
Don’t be surprised when you see sesamum:
The sesamum was sesamum,
The corn was corn,
The silence and the darkness knew
So is a man’s fate born”

So don’t judge it, because you are the source of the thing that you are beholding. Now turn within and prune it by using these pruning shears of revision.

Now this is how we do it. At the end of my day, I review the day; I don’t judge it, I simply review it. I look over the entire day, all the episodes, all the events, all the conversations, all the meetings, and then as I see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I rewrite it. I rewrite it and make it conform to the ideal day I wish I had experienced. I take scene after scene and rewrite it, revise it, and having revised my day, then in my imagination I relive that day, the revised day, and I do it over and over in my imagination until this seeming imagined state begins to take on to me the tones of reality. It seems that it’s real, that I actually did experience it and I have found from experience that these revised days, if really lived, will change my tomorrows. When I meet people tomorrow that today disappointed me, they will not tomorrow, for in me I have changed the very nature of that being, and having changed him, he bears witness tomorrow of the change that took place within me. It is my duty to take this garden and really make it a garden by daily using the pruning shears of revision.

I know from experience it will not only bring about these objectives, and bring about these changes, but the glorious thing is, it awakens in you, who use it, the spirit of Jesus, and you find yourself then not justifying but forgiving, and you will realize that freedom and forgiveness are indissolubly linked. You cannot be free and not forgive, for the one that you would bind and judge and condemn anchors you by your own judgment of him–for he is in you. And so by identifying him with the ideal you want to really realize you free yourself.

You are told “Forgive and you shall be forgiven. Forgive not and then you shall not be forgiven”. It’s automatic; it can’t be otherwise for the whole springs from you who behold it. And as you begin to practice it the very spirit arouses itself within you and you know that you are he that others spoke about and thought lived 2000 years ago.

So, when you realize it, you realize it through actual knowledge, you know it; no argument, you don’t tell others, you know that you are he. And then you will read the words in the ninth of Hebrews, “He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”. And you will know you are the one that put away sin by the sacrifice of self and by the sacrifice of self it’s not being a brave one who throws himself in the line of fire to protect a brother, it doesn’t mean one who gives his body to be burned, one who is nailed on a cross, but the self of man is the sum total of all that that man believes and consents to as true. So that’s the self that is sacrificed.

I heard of this lady and she would make some man a wonderful wife, and yet she is unwed. She desires to be the companion of a great noble person, but she is unwed, I heard that. That becomes a part of myself, that’s my knowledge; I must sacrifice that self, that that aspect of my being be as happy as I am and those in my world are. For that’s the self I must sacrifice and put away sin, for sin to the mystic means missing the mark; it doesn’t mean the violation of certain codes, unless of course you have a mark and the violation fell short, but sin to the mystic is simply haying an aim in life and failing to realize it. So when you miss the mark you have sinned; so he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and knowing that himself is only all that he consents to, all that he accepts, all that he believes to be true, then what am I believing concerning that one–he is unemployed and he can’t find a job? I’m believing it. Now put away that sin where he is missing his mark and then by the putting away of the sin I do it only by the sacrifice of myself and myself is that belief, so now I revise. I can’t say well, I will no longer believe he is unemployed: I believe he’s employed.

I do it by the pruning shears of revision. I bring him before my mind’s eye and I congratulate him on his good fortune because he is now gainfully employed. I allow him to accept my congratulations, because I do not see a man unemployed, I see him employed and he knows he is in my mind’s eye for in that state I have pruned him from the unemployed state and once more reshaped the branch that grows in the garden of God. Tomorrow people will see him as they could not have seen him before the pruning that took place within me and he will be gainfully employed.

That one is unwell, you prune that branch. You don’t accept one thing in the world as final unless it conforms to the ideal you want to realize in the world. But you do it daily; if you do not prune it daily you will get out of the habit, then weeds will grow. Every man who really is a gardener who calls himself a gardener, a gardener in the garden of God, for every day is the opportunity to really prune the tree, this wonderful tree. And so everyone that you meet is a branch rooted in the vine that you are and you are that special tree in the garden of God, a tree bearing life, a tree bearing fruit for the food of the nations. You are that one.

If you take me seriously today, tonight do not let the sun descend upon any vexation of the day. Just look at it, don’t deny it, don’t duck it, look at it that you may prune it and then reshape it. Take the conversations with your friends today, were they pleasant, were they arguments, no matter what it is, were they negative?

Then rewrite the script and just imagine the conversation to have taken place that now you are rewriting for the first time. And it will take place, for everything in your world that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination. And this wonderful imagination of yours is Christ Jesus. Imagination is the actual habitation of every created thing. No matter what you see in the world, it springs from your imagination. So that’s where you go, that’s the workshop, the garden of God.

And now you have a mission, you have a purpose in life; it’s a noble purpose, because you have been selected to really become the chief gardener in the garden of God, and in the garden you must have pruning shears, and pruning shears is revision. You simply revise, and as you revise the day you repeal the day, for the day is not slipping into the past, it does not recede as people think, it is always advancing into the future to confront you, either pruned or in some strange weed-like state.

So it’s entirely up to us–I hope that every man and woman here today will take me seriously and start this day pruning your garden. pruning your mind. I know before I leave this city in a matter of two weeks that you will be able to tell me of the new things that spring in your world or that spring from the pruned tree that is your own lovely imagination. You try it: then you will know what Blake meant when he said. “In heaven, the only art of living is forgetting and forgiving.” The only art of living is complete forgetfulness by putting something in its place, no vacuum, but putting something in its place.

So when you read these strange stories that you read in the daily press, you simply ignore them. They mean nothing. Men who are calling themselves leaders, shepherds of the flock, they excommunicate–not just one religion, all religions the leaders take it upon themselves to excommunicate, not knowing nothing is to be discarded, not a thing in the world can you discard for it is forever, but it can be pruned and made to conform to the ideal image. The man who will not revise his day either does not know it or he has lost the vision of that life into the likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit of Jesus that transformed this life. So you don’t discard them.

In the current issue of “Time” magazine there is that noble soul who is known to us as Spinoza, Baruch de Spinoza, who has given so much to the world of philosophy, so much everyone has been enriched because he walked the earth. And here 300 years later, the ex-premier of Israel, Ben-Gurion, has asked the leading rabbis today to rescind that excommunication of 300 years ago, and they tell this noble soul today that they cannot rescind the works of their forefathers, that the curse remains forever, and you should read that silly, silly curse as it’s printed in the current issue of “Time” magazine. They call upon all the angels to curse him, as though angels would curse; they call upon everything to blast him, you could not walk within four cubits of the man’s shadow; no one should talk to him, no one should show him kindness, no one should write him and never read anything he ever has to say; and that’s 300 years ago.

The rabbis who so cursed him have long been forgotten and if they do live, they live only by reason of their curse. And no one knows really who they really are, but you can’t forget if you read in this world the works of Spinoza. Everyone in this audience possibly has used one of his phrases; did you know it was he who said “nature abhors a vacuum”? Now you use it; I use it, but what is the source of it–it was Spinoza. For here was this giant of a mind that after 300 years little minds who think they’re leading the flock; they call themselves shepherds. They should go back and read well the Book of Jeremiah, “You shepherds who spoil my vines and you who have come into my garden and you have taken my vines, now it bears no grape and it bears no leaf, and the garden of Jerusalem now has become a weed.” Read it in Jeremiah, how he cries out because shepherds, who call themselves shepherds, are blind leaders of the blind.

You take me this morning at my word; you owe me nothing, it costs you not a thing to come here this morning, you come you give me your time and I give you my time, but you go out and try it and start this day pruning that wonderful imagination of yours. Do you know someone that is evil? Stop knowing it by bringing him before your mind’s eye and carry on with him the most wonderful conversation in the world, with a tender spirit, a loving spirit, and believe in the reality of this communion, because if you really do it, you are entering the kingdom of heaven, for you enter heaven by a loving, knowing communion with a friend. So make him a friend, if he is a lovely one, no matter what he is, you can prune him and then as you prune him you are doing the work which you were sent to do for man–and you are that man–you are placed this day in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Don’t let it continue growing weeds in your world.

You are absolutely responsible for every being you meet in this world; that’s your responsibility. Just like the teacher we told you of who took this little child that was just about to be expelled; no, the child is not expelled because she heard what you are hearing this morning. So she brought before her mind’s eye the child that the principal, the psychiatrist and all the faculty had agreed unanimously to expel her on her l6th birthday, for she was rude, she was crude, she was unethical; and she went home on a Sunday night and brought that child before her mind’s eye and communed with her and saw in her a tender child, a considerate child, a loving child. The next day, Monday, in class she expressed all the kindness of that revision of the night before, and ten days later when it was seen and witnessed by all the faculty, and the psychiatrist, another meeting was called and they repealed their verdict of ten days before and the child is not expelled. She still sits in the George Washington High School in New York City, which is considered an excellent school; and so there she is. with no black marks against her because one teacher sat in the audience, as you are here, and she believed, what I hope everyone here will believe, and she redeemed a branch of her own tree. She didn’t realize the child was herself. She saw up to that very moment all the children that she taught in pure objectivity. Blind man sees the world objective to himself, something detached from himself. When man begins to awake he sees everything subjectively related; everything he meets is part of himself, and what he does not now understand, still he knows that it is related by affinity to some as yet unrealized force in his own being. So he doesn’t discard it, he knows his life is the process by which he will redeem it and he redeems it by using the pruning shears of revision.

So I feel that if after these fifty years of walking this earth that this is what that lady saw when I was but seven, I could really close the eye on three dimensions at any moment knowing you will not disprove it: you may never use them but you will never disprove this art of revision. And any man who will try it will prove it to his own satisfaction that he can rise beyond the wildest dream of men, and rising he awakens the spirit of forgiveness. He will rise in the early stages in the successful venture; he will increase his income, he will do all these things, but he will realize after a little while that wasn’t the purpose. They were only toys to tickle him, toys to amuse him until he awoke within himself the spirit of Jesus; then he sees an entirely different mission, not the amassing of wealth but the redeeming of society, the redeeming of every man in the world. He comes to do his Father’s will and we are told in the 6th chapter of John, “This is my Father’s will, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing but I should raise it up again.”

Lose nothing–no, you don’t excommunicate, you don’t rub out, you simply raise it up again and as you raise it up you raise yourself up and the journey is forever. You are moving up an infinite vertical line in your own wonderful imagination, and you only move up by lifting others up. Blind men think they can save themselves, and because they think they can save themselves and discard the rest. The blind man also said this hundreds of years ago. He saved as he saved others; himself he cannot save. I say to you that it’s a false statement; it was put into the mouth of the Pharisee, put into the mouth of the Sanhedrin, the leaders who thought they were leaders, but I will tell you a man saves himself by, and only by the saving of his fellowman. There is no other way of saving self other than by saving the real self and every man is rooted in you who observes men. And so don’t discard, raise them up, prune the tree, and become the real gardener in the garden of God.

Take anything; you have a child today: we took all the requests this morning, there were dozens and dozens of requests this morning. Everyone must be answered, none must be discarded; don’t say one is impossible, there is nothing impossible to your imagination and your imagination is Christ Jesus. With Him all things are possible. Use him, stir him, wake him from his sleep; he has been sleeping through the centuries: because he has slept he has dreamed into being all these strange misshaped states. For the world only bears witness of the use or misuse of imagination. As we are told, he is the only thing in the world. What he is the only thing in the world? –Your imagination, for it is the habitation of every created thing and by it all things are made and without it is nothing made that is made. So use it wisely, use it lovingly and any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another you are at that moment literally mediating God to man. Imagination is the redemptive power of the world and you are actually mediating God to man by using it in a loving, wonderful way.

Neville Goddard—06/26/1970

The Bible tells the story of a promise – of a dream that existed two thousand years only in the imagination of Israel; and when their dream came true, Israel did not recognize their own harvest, and rejected their own harvest – denied it, for they were looking for it in an entirely different way. That is really the essence of the Bible, a promise made to man, and then man believed it. It was to Abraham, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness. So, he had the faith to sustain it and pass it on to generations, and they all believed it; and they maintained, only in their imagination, for two thousand years the dream. Then the dream erupted within an individual – within Israel; and he told the story, but they did not believe. Now we turn to the story. It’s an old man, a hundred years old, and a wife ninety years old; and it is said that “it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women.” In other words, it would be impossible for her to have a child. And the promise was made that she would have a child, and that child would be “your heir, and you will call him Isaac, which means, “he laughs.” Abraham had, from a slave, a son called Ishmael. It was said of him that his hand was against every man, and every man’s hand was against him.

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This same story repeats itself all the way through. It begins with Abraham, and then the two – Ishmael who came first and then Isaac. Isaac was the promise. Then the grandchildren: Esau and Jacob, and God said “Jacob I love; Esau I have hated,” – the same pattern following all through Scripture coming into the New Testament. And in man it erupted – the story.

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Now we find a wonderful story in the Book of John, the 3rd chapter of John. It is not repeated in the Bible; it is only in John. It is not mentioned in Matthew, Mark, or Luke,–where a member of the Sanhedrin -a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus, –a member of the Sanhedrin is the highest body of a religious order. And Israel was a theocracy; it was ruled by the Rabbis, and here was the highest of the Rabbis. He identified something from what he knew of his own scripture, but couldn’t quite put the pieces together. So, he sought Jesus “in the night,” we are told. He came during the night, seemingly in a furtive manner – not to be identified or recognized by other members of the Sanhedrin.

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He addressed him as “Rabbi,” whence the fact that the man knows what others seemingly are not aware of. The conversation takes place in this manner;

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He said, “I know that you are the one that is sent, for no one who is not sent by God could do the things that you do;” and then a sudden break takes place in the conversation, and Jesus said to him;

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“Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

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Nicodemus answered, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

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And Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless one is born from above, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I have said unto you that you must be born from above, for I tell you that the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell whence it comes not whither it goes. So is every one who is born of the spirit.  Nicodemus answered, “How can this be?”

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And Jesus answered him and said, “Are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? I tell you – I tell you what I know, and I bear witness to what I have seen, but you do not receive my testimony.”

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That is the story in essence. Man was looking for it to take place, as Nicodemus did, as all births take place, never having heard of an entirely different kind of a birth. Here, that which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit; but he never heard before that Isaac represented what which is born of the spirit.

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Now, when you read the Bible, the characters of the Bible are not persons as we are; they are eternal states of consciousness through which you and I – the Immortal Being -we pass through these states. The end of it – the climax of it is simply Jesus Christ. Each is destined to awaken one day as Jesus Christ, who is nothing less than God Himself! Every one is destined to awaken as God!

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The birth cannot be of the flesh, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. It cannot enter the Kingdom of God – only Spirit, for God is Spirit. So this represents – Isaac represents – the birth of the Spirit.

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Nicodemus saw only physical birth. He could not understand any kind of a birth outside of a physical birth. Paul, now, explains in his 9th Chapter of his Letter to the Romans, the difference between the two births, and he speaks of the descendants of Abraham after the flesh and that which comes out of Isaac – and “we are named out of Isaac,” he said.

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Well, I will tell you now from my own experience which duplicates that recorded in Scripture. You could not find a more beautiful recording than that which I have just repeated for you from the 3rd Chapter of John. It is accurate. It is perfect. When he uses the word “wind,” some translators said he should have used the word “spirit;” but the words “spirit” and “wind” are identical, both in Hebrew and in Greek – the same word. But he used the right word, for when it happens to you, you think only in terms of wind. When you are “born from above,” and the child is placed in your hand – this wonderful child actually laughs. You pick it up and you look into its face and say in the most endearing manner, “How is my sweetheart?” This heavenly smile breaks upon his face; but you hear a wind. It’s an unearthly wind that I can’t describe by anything known to my physical senses, and yet I heard it through, seemingly, senses, for I heard the wind. I heard it coming from within me and seemingly coming from without.

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So when one is “born from above,” it is the moment when he is resurrected from the grave. This whole thing is dead – just as dead as it can be, but we animate it because we are in it. We are the Dreamer in it dreaming and keeping alive the dream – the promise that is made. May I ask you not to reject it.

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A man – a little man – stands before you, with all the weaknesses, all the limitations of the flesh; but everything that you are heir to I am. I am still heir to it, in spite of what has happened to me; and yet I tell you it has happened to me, and plead with you not to reject it, but accept it, for the day is not long from now when this little thing [indicating his physical body] must be shed. That which has already happened within me, which is forever, just simply escapes. That is the Imprisoned Splendor waiting – bursting to get out permanently. It gets out night after night on a certain work to be done; but it is waiting for that moment when, for the first time, it takes off this little garment, and the silver cord is snapped and the Imprisoned Splendor set free, that which is within a man. It comes when he is “born from above.”

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So, the conversation between them is all about the Kingdom of Heaven and the only way that it can be entered. There is no other way you can enter it. So, until the “birth” takes place, you are still flesh and blood. You will “die” here – yes, but you cannot die, may I tell you? It seems silly. It seems stupid to tell you when a man dies and you cremate the body and you scatter the ashes that he is not dead. Yet, I know from my own experience of many who have gone – I have seen them. I have talked with them. I am talking to you. They don’t even know they are “dead.” They say to me, “Who is dead?”

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I say, “You’re not dead, but you ‘died.’ I was at your funeral. You are buried,” – and I tell them the cemetery where they are buried. They can’t believe it, because they are not dead. They are so alive to themselves, they can’t believe it for one moment. And you can bring back certain things: “You recall so-and-so?”

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“Yes. Did he die?” they begin to think.

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“Well, yes, he did die.”

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“Well then, look at him. Is he ‘dead’? There he is – he died. You went to his funeral, didn’t you?” -and then they begin to think.

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“Yes, I did.” “Well then, look at him. He isn’t dead, but he died.”

“Well, you died, too, Jack; but you are not ‘dead’ because nothing dies in God’s world, for God is the God of the living.”

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Every one that “dies” here is instantly restored in a body just like this, but young -unaccountably new – unaccountably young with nothing missing. If you had parts missing, they aren’t missing then. If you were deaf, blind, dumb, you aren’t deaf,–none of these things happened. You are simply completely restored, and you are perfect. But you are still in a world just like this, and you will still go through all the things you do here. You will work. You will marry; you will do all the things you do here, just as you do it here, until that moment when you are “born from above.”

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When you are “born from above,” you can die no more. That is behind you, as told you in the 20th Chapter of the Book of Luke, when they asked the question: “Tell me, in the Resurrection whose wife will that one be?” because she had married seven brothers. And he said to those who questioned him, because they were all great scientists – in those days they spoke of the Pharisee and the Sadducee; and the Sadducee was what we would call today the scientist – the agnostic or even the atheist. He won’t believe in survival because nothing could convince him that the body was not the reality – that something could escape from this body. So they asked him the question, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?” for she married seven.

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And he said to the Sadducees, “The children of this age marry, and they are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that Age and to the Resurrection from the dead, they neither marry, nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, being sons of the Resurrection.

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So, the whole drama begins with the Resurrection, which is the “birth from above.” They are two sides of the same coin; it happens only moments apart. You feel the most terrific vibration within your head. You feel – as I did – that “this is it!” meaning this is now a hemorrhage – a brain hemorrhage that must be massive, and therefore they will find the body tomorrow morning on the bed, and Neville is gone from this world.

Instead of that, I felt myself waking – waking from a dream. I had no idea it wasn’t a normal dream; but when I awoke, I was not in this world. I was in my skull, and I knew instantly that my skull was a sepulcher and I had been placed there. How I got there, I did not know; but I only knew that somebody who put me there knew of thought I was “dead.” So, I was buried as one that was dead, and you are now buried as one that is dead; and you are dreaming this dream of life in your skull. And that’s where you are. Your Immortal Being is there.

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When I awoke to find myself completely sealed, I had an intuitive knowledge – as you are told, “The one who wakes is the wisdom of God, and he is the power of God,” for that’s how Christ is defined in Scripture: “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And I knew exactly what to do. I would push the base of the skull. May I tell you? All things being relative, I stood within my skull. This [indicating his head] is a little tiny thing. How could Neville, 5’ll”, stand in a skull? I stood in my skull! It is the Immortal Skull – and the Immortal Head. I stood in it just like I stand here on the stage, and I went to the base of it, and I pushed from within. As I did so, something rolled away.

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That stone rolled away, and then I came out, inch by inch, head first, just like a child being born; but I’m a man, and a whole man came out; and then when I was almost out, I pulled the remaining portion of me out of that body. And then the wind became even more intense – “the wind blowing where it wills.” I heard the sound thereof, but I could not tell whence it came or whither it would go. So, I looked over to the corner, having just seen the body; I looked over and couldn’t see anything that could be the cause of it, but still it intensified like some enormous hurricane. I looked back to the body and it was gone.

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Then three witnesses, as told us in the Book of Genesis,–they then stand before – you didn’t see them approaching – they stand before Abraham, to whom the promise was made. Now I am playing the part of Abraham, for here the promise is made; and these three witnesses sent from God, and one is not only the spokesman of God, it is God Himself! As he looks up, he doesn’t see them approaching. There they are! I looked and I didn’t see these three men approaching. There they sat where the body was, and they are discussing.

And in Scripture, whenever vision breaks into sound – into speech, the presence of David is assured. They began to talk, discussing the wind; and then one is completely disturbed and walks towards the same direction where I thought the wind originated. He goes two steps and he sees the infant, the sign. As told us in Scripture, the child is only a sign of the “birth” of God. He announces the father of the child. They question his right. They say, “How can,” – calling me by name – “have a baby?” He doesn’t argue the point; he lifts the child and presents it, and then I take the child. And then is when it smiles in my face.

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Are we not asked in the 30th Chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, “And the Lord said unto Jeremiah,” -and the word “Jeremiah” means “Jehovah will rise.” It is Jehovah who is buried in you. Jehovah will rise. And then Jehovah speaks to His prophet whose name, as I’ve just defined for you, is “Jehovah will rise,” – “Can a man bear a child?” Obviously the answer is, No. And then the Lord speaks:

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“Why, then, do I see every man with his hands drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why has every face turned pale?”

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That is just as it happens. The face is ghastly pale like one in death practically, only it is moving, because the head moves, like one in recovery from a great ordeal.

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But here, you draw your Self out of yourself, just as you are told. But the Old Testament is an adumbration: it is a forecasting in a not-altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. The whole thing is adumbrated. One reading it could not read the sketch. It’s like a sketch. But when it actually happens in one as the cubic reality, and he reinterprets Scripture, taking you from the sketch to the reality of it, they would not accept it. They could not believe it.

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Now, the Bible begins with the Self-revelation of god. He said to Moses, –and this is the Lord speaking: “I speak unto my servant Moses. I appeared unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name The Lord I did not make myself known unto them.”

The word translated “the Lord” is “Yod-He-Vau-He,” which means “I Am.” It is to Moses that He reveals His intimate identity, which is I Am.

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But Moses said, “When they ask me, What is his name, what must I say?” 

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“Say I Am has sent me unto you.”

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He didn’t reveal this intimacy to the three states called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They saw Him purely as Power – sheer power that was a destructive power, like the lightning, like the thunder, like the earthquake. Thy saw It only as power.

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Now He comes into the more intimate revelation of Himself in one called Moses, and there He reveals Himself as I AM. It is an intimate relationship. You say, “I am.” That’s He! But the word “Moses” means “One to be born.” So we are told in the story, Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, because it was not yet born. The revelation of God came to that point of an intimate relationship of the presence being felt, which was I AM; but something more had to be born. So we are told he was not allowed to go into the Promised Land, but one called Joshua went into the Promised Land.

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Well, the word “Joshua” is the same as the word “Jesus.” It is the Hebrew form of the Anglicized form “Jesus,” which means “Jehovah Saves,” which is the same thing as “Jehovah.” “Joshua” and “Jehovah” and “Jesus” are identical in meaning. So, Moses couldn’t go because he was not yet born into the further unveiling of God.

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What was the other unveiling of God? The final revelation of God-in-man is that of Father. When He unveils Himself as Father, that’s the final revelation of God to man, for then he has completed His task in giving Himself to man. For it’s God’s purpose to actually give Himself to man. So, there’s no two – just you; and you and He are one. So, you can’t say, “God and I,” -for you are God! You actually become God.

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That is the story of the Bible. So, God as Father – only when you find Him now as Father. How would I find Him as a father? To see a man standing before me that I know to be my father? No. I see his son standing before me who knows me as his father.

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So, when I find God’s only begotten son standing before me,–and he doesn’t even have to call me “Father;” I know he is my son, and he knows I am his father; but he does call me “Father.” He calls me his lord, and I know I am his father. He stands before me, and who is he? He is the one mentioned in the Old Testament, for “I’ve come only to fulfill Scripture.”

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The only “scripture” spoken of in the New Testament is the Old Testament. So when he said, “I come only to fulfill Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me; and beginning, ” – not with the Gospels, not with the Letters, he begins with the Old Testament; he begins with the law of Moses, then he comes to the Prophets, he comes into the Psalms; and “he interprets to them in all the scriptures of the Old Testament the things concerning himself.”

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So, when one fulfills Scripture – that is the Old scripture,–then the story has come to its end, and in the fulfillment God unveils Himself, and that’s the last unveiling, and that is “Father.” So, he has come to make known the real name of God, and the name is “Father.” So, he smiled, “I have made known Thy name, and I will make it known that the love with which Thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them.” He begins the whole thing by calling upon the Father. Then he said, “I and my Father are one.”

Neville Goddard—10/24/1966

Tonight’s subject is “The Primal Wish”. I am so thrilled that you are here tonight. Listen carefully to what I will tell you concerning this primal wish.

In the very first chapter of Genesis, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” That’s the primal wish. And Shakespeare said, “It has been taught us from the primal state that he which is was wished until he were.” This is tonight’s subject. We are making an image.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians, “Christ, the image of the invisible God” and in his letter to the Corinthians he speaks of Christ as the likeness of God, completing the primal wish. Then Paul goes on to say, “My little children who I am again in labor, until Christ be formed in you.” The image and likeness of God must be formed in you, for God is invisible. You will never know who you are until God’s Son identifies you as his Father, and he can’t identify that which is invisible; he must see his Father’s face. So when the image is formed, in you, God’s only son appears and calls you Father.

Now let me share with you a letter that was given to me a few days ago by a dear friend of mine. Listen carefully, for the dream is filled with symbolism. I’ll bring it out from scripture. This is his dream.

“The war was on and I found myself in a dilapidated farmhouse somewhere in Europe . Through the window I could see a huge cliff covered with mines from which came the bullets of guns. They were shooting at me and I at them. They intended to kill me and I intended to kill them. Then I went into the front room and there, to my surprise, were all of the soldiers of my squadron ready to go out the front door. I mentioned that they would be shot, but they told me that the enemy was gone. Then I said, “My God, did I shoot them all?’

“As they walked through the door they were transformed and fused into a single being who was you, and you led me to the back of the house. Then I saw that the cliff filled with mines had vanished and in its place was an enormous field of wheat being harvested by men and women. There was already a mountain of wheat to my right.

“Then I asked, ‘What are they doing?’ And you replied, ‘They are doing the same thing today that they did this time last year.’ Sensing a lapse of memory I said, ‘How long have I been here?’ and you replied, ‘Two years.’ In this I sensed symbolism, so I asked, ‘Did I learn anything?’ and nodding you said, ‘Yes, you learned how to move’ and disappeared. Then I walked back into the house which had now turned into a palace and I was led to my quarters.”

We are told in the book of Numbers, “God speaks to man through the medium of dreams.” I tell you, you are not here by accident, not one of you, for tonight I will lead you toward the fulfillment of that primal wish, “Let us make man in our image.” I will lead you toward getting dominion over everything in the world, things on the earth, below the earth, under water, below the water, in the heavens and beyond. Infinite power is yours after the image of the invisible God is formed in you, for there is nothing but God.

Now, he had been there two years. Two is conflict; it is energy. The wall of hostility must be turned down between God and his emanation that they may become one, for God cleaves to his emanation, his wife until the sleep of death is past and the wall of hostility has disappeared. The number two is the important thing. It’s not two years of 365 days per year, but conflict, and while it lasted he had enemies, all within him. Then the wall is broken down and he goes to the front room to see all of the soldiers who formed his squadron transform themselves into me. Then I took him to the back of the house.

The 10^th chapter of John tells the story of the door. In it he says, “I am the door. Those who come through in any other way are thieves and robbers.” There is no other way, no other door but that which I have told you from experience. Listen carefully to my testimony, for it’s the only way in. My sheep hear my voice and they know me. He knew me when his soldiers were transformed into me. He heard my voice and asked me questions, knowing I could answer them. “I am the door, and I will lead you into an abundant life.” When the conflict is over, I who am speaking to you from within, will call my sheep by name and bring you into a more abundant life.

Now the harvest is on and a mountain of wheat has been harvested. Blake said, “Great things happen when men and mountains meet”, and the only mountain Blake ever climbed was the mountain of his own skull.

What are they doing now? The same thing they did this time last year. It goes on and on forever and ever until the wall is broken down and the division between you and He who is forming you into his image is no more. Having formed you into his image, then his Son can see you, for to look into the face of Christ is to see God, as Christ is the image of the invisible God. God, being invisible, cannot be seen unless his image is formed. And his Son cannot find him unless he has an image, a face and a form.  We must make man in our image so we may be seen by our son. Jesus, the invisible God, is forming Christ as his image so that Jesus, who is the Lord God Jehovah, can be seen by his Son. This image is being formed in you.

As my friend walked through the door the shepherd led him to fields ripe with harvest, as well as a mountain of harvested wheat. It took a long, long time to harvest that much, but it was all done in the conflict. He wondered what they were doing, for he knew the war was still on. He could hear the heavy guns in the distance, but they seemed so very far away. Then he asked three questions and the answers were quite simple.

“What are they doing?”

“The same thing they did this time last year.”

Sensing amnesia he said, “How long have I been here?”

“Two years.”

“Have I learned anything?”

“Yes, you have learned how to move.”

The first creative act in the Bible, “God moved upon the face of the water.” We are here to learn now to move from state to state, from a state of conflict to the state of fulfilled desire. God moved and then proclaimed, “Let there be light.” Everything exists, but must be illuminated from within, for I am the light.

Imitate your heavenly Father and learn the art of moving. Learn how to move from a warring state into a state of peace. Then rest in it saying, “Let it be” and watch it come into being. When he asked, “Have I learned anything?” I nodded and said, “Yes, you learned how to move and discipline.” Discipline is simply becoming discriminating. It does not matter what your desire may be; it is only a state. When you learn how to move you can enter any state and say, “Let it be” and the state will become luminous; it will become real in your world.

I can’t tell you my thrill when I received his letter, because I know who I am. I know I have been sent to lead my sheep, and I know them all by name. They know me and will follow no other shepherd as told us in the 10^th chapter of John.

In the same letter my friend said, “This morning I dreamed I was lying on my bed as I felt the top of my head. The left side was normal, but the right side was at least one inch higher. Then I remembered that my skull had been split. Calling to my wife I said, “Now I know why I have been feeling this way. I cracked my skull.” As I wondered how long I would be in the hospital, I awoke.” Then he added, “I have never felt more peaceful. It started the moment I felt the cracked skull. It is a peculiar reversal of feeling. Instead of being a three-dimensional sense man, using a fourth dimensional power, I am now identified with a fourth dimensional power using a three-dimensional sense man as an instrument. I know that Blake expressed it more beautifully, but after all it does seem to me that you can’t quite say, “At length for hatching ripe, he cracked his skull.” If you are not familiar with Blake, in his “Gates of Paradise” he says, “At length for hatching ripe, he breaks the shell.” The shell is the skull. But, like the awakened brothers, my friend always finishes his letters in a humorous note.

Whenever the brothers, this infinite body of awakened men, speak to me, they are always humorous. A few weeks ago my publisher suggested taking several of my hard cover books and placing them in a soft cover book. I agreed and decided to write a last chapter to be incorporated into the new book. While dwelling upon it, this night, I was one with the brothers, the Elohim, and they said, quite humorously yet in a very serious manner, “Go write your condensed concentrated paper.” They said it in the same intimate, kidding tone my earthly brothers use when they speak of anything I do. So I finished about six thousand words and called it “Resurrection, A Confession of Faith in Terms of Experience.” In it I, like those who spoke to me, related my own experiences.

Then early this Sunday morning I found myself explaining the word of God, not from a platform, but in a more intimate manner, when I had occasion to look at my watch. It wasn’t on my arm, but on a table. It’s the same watch I am now wearing, for I recognized it, and it registered 4:10. I continued talking for at least an hour and when I looked again the watch still read 4:10. Deciding the watch must have stopped, I went into a deeper sleep and awoke this morning on my bed. In that experience God spoke to me through the medium of dream. And the outstanding thing in that experience was not what I told them, but 4:10.

Now in the Hebrew tongue every letter has a numerical as well as a symbolic value. The fourth letter is “daleth” with a symbolic value of a door. The tenth letter is “Yod” and its symbolic value is the creative hand of God, the hand of the director, the hand of the creator. It is the first letter in the sacred name of YOD HE VAV HE, which is pronounced Jehovah, which is Jesus. In this vision it’s the last watch, it’s 4:10 a.m. The 90^th Psalm tells us, “A thousand years in thy sight is as a watch in the night.” There are six watches to a 24-hour day. Starting at 6:00 a.m. a watch runs to ten, then ten to two and two to six, and repeats itself during the night. I knew this was morning because of the atmosphere and the darkness. This was my last watch. It was 4:10, and I had reached the point of being the door and the creative hand of God. It can’t be long delayed before my garment is removed permanently. Then I will join those who now, humorously tell me to “Go write your condensed, concentrated paper.” And I will join that same body who contemplates on death, which is this world.

You are told in the works of Blake, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6000 years dancing round my skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is myself, O my divine creator and redeemer.” If a thousand years is a watch in the night, and there are six watches in a 24-hour day, a watch is a thousand years. And if this was the first watch of the day it would not be the door, but it’s my last watch, it’s 4:10 in the morning. I am now playing the part of the creative power and wisdom of God, for I must bring those that he gave me into the fold of an abundant life. They will come one by one. Called by name they will be brought into the fold. Brought from a conflict of confusion to a field of golden harvest. All will come through that one door, for there is no other door.

The primal wish, “Let us make man in our image” is simply forming, in man a self-illumination.  “My little children in whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.” It must be formed. And he will remain in labor until everyone that was given him is brought out with the image competed and perfect. Then he will bring them through the door into an abundant life.

The dream of my friend revealed an important fact, that he had learned how to move. If, during conflict, man could only move, the conflict would cease to be. God’s first creative act was to move upon the face of the water and let it be. Knowing that he illuminates and reveals the state in which he has placed himself, God moves upon the face of the water. If, tonight, you have a desire, it can be yours if you learn how to move. Through the years I have been trying to show you how to move, by bringing into your mind’s eye a scene, which would imply that you are where you want to be. If you were already there would you see the world differently? If you wouldn’t, then you have not moved. Motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another state. If you move at the speed of light and everything moves with you, you haven’t moved. But if you let it be, and move relative to it, then by looking you can see a change in position relative to it and know you have moved.

Start here, in this auditorium. Look at the pictures on the walls, the speaker and the audience around you. Then feel you are moving toward the back of the room and you will see everything at a different angle. Now, your friends know your weaknesses and limitations. You share your fears with them and they share their doubts with you. The desire to move and the movement itself is an inward motion. Using the same frame of reference, move inwardly by seeing them differently, and allowing them to see you, not as they formerly did, but as you would like them to see you. If they are friends they will rejoice, and if they are not they will show envy. Whatever they are relative to you, they will express. They are your fixed frame of reference and confirmation of your motion.

Now, there are infinite states in this world, and man moves from one state to another either consciously or unconsciously. He falls into them knowingly or unknowingly, but regardless, he must reap the fruit of the state into which he has entered. That’s the law.

My friend had a fantastic experience. It began with conflict, but when it was over he walked through the one and only door as his squadron became one man, one he could not see while in conflict. Led to the rear of the house he discovers everything transformed into an infinite field of wheat in harvest because he has formed the image. Now, instead of seeing conflict, he sees only ripe wheat, baked in a golden glow.

He learned how to move and I ask you here, tonight, to do the same. Motion is not difficult, but don’t go from place to place. “Whatever house (state of consciousness) into which you go, there remain until I come.” If you know how to move, and remain faithful to that motion, your world will reflect it and no power in the world can stop it.

You are set free by learning how to move, and you will learn discipline at the same time.

Now let us go into the silence.

Q: Does two always mean conflict?

A: You are told in scripture, if two different persons agree in testimony it is conclusive. If I want to be healthy I am confessing I am not, so we are in conflict. We must now agree to be one. Assuming health, I hear my relatives and friends tell me they have never seen me looking better. Now the state called health, and I who didn’t feel well, have agreed in testimony. This is true for any state. If I am impoverished and would like to be secure, there is conflict. Assuming wealth I resolve the conflict, for the two states have agreed in testimony, and as I persist it is conclusive. When you enter a state say, “Let there be light.” Let it become luminous so you can see it, that you may manifest it in your world, and it will be so.

Neville Goddard—1953

I think you know how thrilled I am to be back here, for this is the one platform that grants me complete freedom. You know that. Dr. Bailes has never once restricted me or even suggested any condition. He gives me complete freedom of this platform, and for that I am really very happy, for I couldn’t be here unless he did.

Now I have brought you this year an entirely new series. I have named this first one “The Power of Awareness” because it is the foundation stone on which the entire structure rests. Not a thing has happened in the past year to shake that foundation. Many things have happened, many revelations, many experiments, and yet the foundation remains intact.

For those not familiar with this foundation, we make the claim that conscious ness is the one and only reality. So, if you call God the ultimate reality, that is the name we give to this ultimate reality. So we say Consciousness is God. We say consciousness in action is imagination. And if consciousness in action, or God in action, is the Son bearing witness of his Father, then we come to the conclusion that imagination is that son.

We have had nothing this year, as I tell you, to disturb that deep conviction. We look upon the world as, I would say, a manifestation of consciousness; and the whole vast conditions of men but revelations of individual states of consciousness. We distinguish between the individual identity and the state of consciousness that it occupies. You are an eternal being. The real you is the imaginative you, personified for us in our Gospel as Christ Jesus, but man doesn’t know it. But this is your real being. This being is your wonderful imagination.

When we speak of the revelation of state, we simply mean that the state in which the real you for a moment abides, objectifies itself as the condition and the circumstances 0£ your life. If you are dissatisfied with the conditions of life, there is no possible way of changing them unless you first change the state from which you view the world; for the state from which a man observes the world determines the world that man describes. For the world that is described from observation must be, as thus described, relative to the describing observer.

In a very simple way, were I to ask you now “Where is San Diego?” and you answered “About, I would say, approximately 130 miles from here.” And then I ask another question, “Where is Santa Barbara?” and you replied “Approximately 100 miles from here.” Well, I do not have to be an Einstein to tell you where you are, for if you tell me where these two are, and one is a hundred miles from here relative to you, and the other is a hundred and thirty miles from here relative to you, I know you must be somewhere within the vicinity of this City 0f Los Angeles.

Now the same law holds good in any description you make of the world. If I ask you to describe your world socially, and I listen attentively to your description of the world, you are revealing your position in the social world to me. If I ask you to describe it intellectually, financially, spiritually, you may not know it, but the description that you offer of the world is revealing to me who listens – or to yourself if you are attentive – that particular state of consciousness from which you view the world. And you will continue to see the world as you now see it, unless you change your state of consciousness.

Now, there are certain words that in the course of long use gather very many strange connotations. And so, in the course of time, they cease to mean anything at all. Such a word is the “sub-conscious”. Such a word is, too, – and do not be shocked – such a word is “Christ Jesus”. No two have the same opinion of the word, the same definition or mood of the word. Let us now take a look at the word “sub-conscious” and see how it is defined for us. This is the definition as given to us in any good dictionary. It is that portion of mental state not directly within the focus of consciousness, but capable of being called into such focus by the proper stimulus.

Now that is the definition of this fabulous realm. Now let us look at the claim made for this realm. Our mental scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists of today refer to this region as the creative power in man; that everything in man’s world is determined by the activities of the subconscious mind; that man himself has absolutely no control over the activities of this region unless he first gets into a relationship with it. For here is a region that they call the sub-conscious; others call it the “unconscious” , and still others speak of it as the “collective unconscious”, but they claim for it a creative power that molds the outer world in harmony with the inner arrangement of its self. So they give it structure, they give it reality, they give it form, and they claim its structure determines the outer structure we observe and call the only reality: that any modification in the internal structure of this deep region results in corresponding changes in the outer objective world. But then they leave us at the mercy of IT, unless we can find the trick of entering into a relationship with it.

Now, let us turn to the Gospel. What is said of the central character of the Gospel – the one I refer to as Christ Jesus. It is said of this central figure that “All things were made by Him, and without Him there is nothing made that is made”. All things, not a few things, all things – it includes all. I read my Gospel carefully and I find that from within out is the order of the Universe. In the 7th Chapter of Mark “Not what goes in defileth the man, but what proceeds out of the heart”, either for good or for evil. Not just the good comes out, but the evil can come out too. All things come from within out; what goes within cannot defile the man; only the thing that proceeds out of the heart of man can bless him or defile him; that there is some creative power in man that constantly molds the outer world in harmony with itself, and this Creative Power is described for us as Christ Jesus .

Now, let us take another look at what they teach us: that there is a method they use to pry into the deep of this region; that when a man is asleep, they use the method of dreams to pry into the deep. For the Bible tells us that from cover to cover. “In a dream, when deep sleep falleth upon men, then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.” You are told that God speaks with his prophet’s chiefly in dreams. It was a dream that prompted them all to bring about their great revelation. Your are told that this wise man, the wisest of all, was promised riches and long life and great power, and behold, Solomon awoke, and it was a vision in the night! You are told the birth of the central figure was prophesied in a dream, and everything was but the dream.

Now we discover there is another way of looking into the deep, and the waking way of looking into the deep is through man’s imagination; that imagination is now the waking method used to pry into this great mysterious deep. For the ancients discovered that if they would ever discover really the ultimate reality, it could never be by any instrument made by man. In order to discover the ultimate reality, they would have to set Mind to observe itself, and then to accurately record those observations. For they concluded that no description of Mind made by any science known to man could be an adequate description of the Mind which made that science. So when today we are speaking of taking the imagination to look into the deep, it is looking at itself. You set imagination to observe self and then to accurately record those observations. And you must come to the conclusion, imagination is the central figure 0f the Gospel.

When you will read your Gospel with this in Mind, the whole thing becomes a luminous book. One simple little passage, take it from any passage – if this was an open meeting I would challenge you now to ask me anything concerning the central figure, and taking the simple little technique of identifying that figure with my own imagination, the answer will be automatic .

So here is one. “Peter, lovest thou me? Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Then feed my sheep.” And three times the same question is asked and three times a similar answer is given. And the last answer brought about a certain rebellion for it was asked three times. But now you take it as imagination asking itself, “I have discovered my savior, I discovered my shepherd, and what would be the sheep, for our minds are like rambling sheep, or our thoughts like rambling sheep that have no shepherd. Now that you have found me to be your shepherd, to be your savior, your own wonderful imagination to be the central figure; ‘Now, do you love Him?’ You answer “Yes!”. Well, then feed my sheep. “Well, then did I not feed the sheep? At any moment when did I not feed the sheep? “When you did not do it unto the least among one of these”. Any time you imagine any unlovely thought against another, you walked me in the mud. And then you said you loved me, but any time that your imagination was ever exercised on behalf of another, and it was not lovingly exercised, you did not feed me. You walked me in the mud.

And yet man goes blindly on believing he serves the Master; believing he truly understands Christ Jesus; that he understands and loves his Savior. And morning, noon and night he imagines the unlovely things against his neighbor, not knowing at that very moment he was walking his Master in the gutter. And so we are told “I sought water, and you gave me not to drink. I sought food, and you gave me not. I sought shelter and you took me not in. I needed raiment and you clothed me not.” But when did these things happen? I don’t recall ever turning you away. When you did not do it unto the least among one of these, you did not do it unto me. And then when did I do these things ? Whenever you did it to the very least among one of these, you did it unto me. And the day will come when man will discover the “least” spoken of is himself. When man discovers that the greatest of all the tyrants, the one who is the most impudent of all the offenders, the one who is the greatest of all the beggars is himself. Then he will discover that he stands in need of the alms of his own forgiveness and instead of railing against himself, he will start with self to ennoble his own thoughts, to lift himself up by imagining the best first of himself and then he will share that with the world round about him. For he will look out on a world and describe it relative to himself and he will not now see the unlovely things that formerly he saw. For this is what we mean by this foundation stone that so far has not been shaken.

A very wise man, Emerson, said that whenever a true theory appears it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain the phenomena of life. I am convinced we have that true theory for this theory we give you here that your consciousness is the only reality and that the particular state of consciousness in which you abide is the sole cause of the phenomena of your life cannot be shaken. I ask you to test it, even if the test is motivated by the determination to disprove it. I will ask you to try it, for I know you will not disprove it. That this wonderful consciousness of yours is the ultimate reality, and you are free to choose the state into which you will go. But most of us have chosen, but unwisely. Not a thing is wrong with the state; the state is all right but it’s giving effect to it that makes it either right or wrong as far as we are concerned.

Now our theory, I assure you, has not been suddenly conjured out of the nowhere and the stories I have told you here for the last seven years, the case histories I have recorded in my last book, ‘The Power of Awareness”, were not fabricated to fit this theory. But this theory was slowly built up by careful observation of the facts. For when someone would come into my world and describe their world to me, they revealed the being that they really are. When I ask the simple question, “What do you want?” and they named it and they told me they really want it with all their heart, and then I asked them how would they see the same world had they realized their objective? Looking at the same world they began to describe it differently. I said, “Now, that is the description you must make of the world. You must weave that into your mind, for in so doing you move into the state where that world becomes real relative to that state.”

So if you now know the world you would see had you achieved your aim, then that is the world you must begin to see in the mind’s eye. And if in time that state becomes an objective fact, then the theory as you see was not made to fit it; it formed itself by a careful observation of these facts. So if I could repeat that time and time again, and each time by moving this permanent “I” into the desired state and let it occupy that state long enough to make it natural, at the moment of naturalness the state becomes visibly objective to them, then we have a true theory. For it does explain the phenomena of life.

So here, in this series we have brought you many revelations. One that I want to stress throughout the entire series is the wide difference between thinking from an end and thinking of an end. Right now I am thinking from Los Angeles; every part of this world, if I should think of it, I’m thinking of it. But I am thinking from Los Angeles, and the difference between the two, as you can see, one is reality and one is a dream not yet made real, because imagination is the central figure of the Bible, and no power in the world can stop his travel. He can go into any mansion and there abide. There is no power on the face of the earth that can stop me now from imagining myself into the state desired. So I begin to think from it. As I begin to think from it, all former states vanish and that is the great Son of God that can move into any mansion of his Father’s house and there occupy. If he ever goes in and occupies it, then I shall be there in the flesh also. So in this Father’s house of mine are the unnumbered states that are already existent and I, discovering who the son really is, and only the son can go into these mansions, so discovering the son to be my own imagination, I will dwell in imagination as though I dwell in the flesh, and then living in that state I will take my body also, that I may confirm that state. For dwelling in the state long enough clothes the state in flesh.

So here: every one of us, if you will accept it; can from this day on be as free as the wind. It’s entirely up to you to choose what mansion you will enter, for you are the only architect of your sufferings or your good fortune. There is no power outside that has caused anything to happen to you; it’s simply your choice, as I said earlier, your unwise choice. Knowing who you are now, and not being ashamed to lay claim to this bold, bold assumption that Christ in man is man’s imagination, then you will stop calling on some external force for help. As the Prophets say, why stand we here calling on God for help and not on ourselves in whom He dwells, as our imagination. So why call elsewhere, when He dwells here where I stand as my imagination. For is there any power to stop me from imagining that I am the man I want to be? So that I actually clothe it with a feeling of reality? If I can so clothe this imagined state with all the vivid sensitiveness of reality, then I will ultimately actually clothe it in flesh, for that’s the Law, from within out.

If you are bold enough to take it, you will free yourself today. If you are still timid, may I suggest you go back and read the seventh chapter of the Book of Mark, where you must then still keep alive the traditions of men and ignore the Law of God. So men wash the cups, and wash the pots, and pay all outside obeisance to things known as the traditions of men, that they may be seen of men and be considered holy. But I bring, said He, the Law of God and no man seems to hear it. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Have you ever heard these words, “Christ in you is the hope of glory”; not some Christ without but Christ in you is. But if we aren’t bold enough to lay claim to it, for we are told “Ye have the mind of Christ” not a mind that you are going to earn in time to come, you have it now, so lay claim to it, and begin to exercise this giant of the mind that is called the Son of God in the Bible, and you will see who your savior really is.

Now, may I give you a few of his titles, for these are all taken from the Bible. He is called the Redeemer; He is called the Savior; He is called the Passover; He is called the Second Man; He is called The Desire of all Nations. Now take it and see how it fits your wonderful imagination. The man you don’t know to exist – that Second Man – is the imaginative you; the one you hold captive by accepting the evidence of sense and only that which reason dictates. If you will now free the Second Man, you will see how he is the Passover. He can pass now from this present state into any desired state in the world, for no power can stop you from dwelling in imagination where you desire to dwell. So, placing yourself there, you begin to think from it, and not constantly starve yourself by thinking of it. So I will go and prepare it, and preparing it I will dwell in it, and begin to think from it.

Now, I assure you, unnumbered similar stories have been told me in the past year by those who took me at my word and began to awaken Christ within, for He had been asleep while the senses dictated their every step, and then completely denying the evidence of sense and boldly imagining themselves to be what they desired to be, they have found their savior, and what man the world could turn them back to the traditions of man. They are free from all traditions of men, and so no man can appear before them and call himself the intermediary between man and God. So they are turned from all intermediaries, having found the only Redeemer and the Redeemer is the only intermediary between man and God. So then you know that any time that you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are literally mediating God to man. So you don’t need any of the traditions of men and keep them alive, hoping that you will be considered by some invisible power, some holy being.

So, let us turn back and freshen up again this word which has been so abused, which now is your imagination, which people, without defining, call the “subconscious” as though it was some appendage. People go around speaking of “my subconscious mind”, or “My unconscious mind”, not knowing what they are referring to.

Well, this fabulous series of mental states is your imagination. And may I tell you it has form, it has structure, just as real as the visible objective world; that the inner world is a world of reality. Call it by any name. I call it my wonderful imagination, and it assumes the form of all that I accept and consent to as true. It actually assumes the form of the sum total of all of my beliefs, and my beliefs need not be true. They need not come near the truth. My beliefs could be prejudices; they could be superstitions. It doesn’t care. It will take all the stripes of men and wear them. So it will assume the form of the sum total of all that man consents to in this world, and then mold the outer world in harmony with the inner arrangement of itself. Therefore, to change the outer world, I must modify or change, in some way alter, the structure of the inner or second man – the second man being my imagination.

So I set myself to observe myself and to watch how my imagination works. And here is something that will interest you. I observe it always moves according to habit; that it is a being of habit, and so if I get into the habit of thinking the unlovely thoughts, it becomes very natural, so I listen only to that which is critical of another. I listen only to that which is not full of praise, that which judges harshly, and so according to habit it moves along these pathways.

Now, if I don’t like the outer world, and I really believe it is caused by the structure of the inner or second man, I then must change his likeness, change his form, by observing how I react to all the unlovely, and how I am not interested in the praise of another, and then begin to feed my sheep, begin to change my thoughts, my feelings, my moods concerning others, and as I begin to change my reactions to people, I find I am changing the structure of the Son of God. And then I automatically produce corresponding changes in my outer world.

If you really like it, and you are bold enough to take it, I promise you a world that is undreamed of by our wise men for even sleep will no longer be the unconscious that it is to the majority of people in the world; that sleep becomes only a doorway into the world where this real you – the second man – really lives and moves and has its being. It is a dimensionally larger world, and you enter it quickly in meditation, or night after night in sleep, and you will find opportunities that would dwarf the wildest dream of men here.

So I ask you to really believe it, and try in the short interval of four weeks while we are here to so prove it that you can tell me of the things that have happened to you by putting into practice this Power of Awareness. Learn to become aware at any moment of time of your fulfilled desire. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and learn to become intensely aware of the state fulfilled, that you may look upon your world and describe it relative to your fulfilled desire. And learn then to sustain that mood. You will find in time through the habitual motion of your inner you, after a little while, because it always travels according to habit, it will move through habit into the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and the moment it is a natural wearing to itself, it starts to change the outer world to reflect the inner change of your mind.

Now, I hope you will take it, but there is no power in the world that can compel you to take it. You are as free as the wind to take it or not to take it. If you would rather persist in the belief that your Savior lived years ago and died for you and through his death, external to yourself, you are saved; you are entitled to believe it.

As I told you earlier, because the inner you is molded in harmony with the sum total of all your beliefs, you will continue to have visible proof of the truth of that belief. For you will find millions believing with you, and you will believe that the numbers make it right, and so you will contribute to the whole vast traditions of men. If you want to come out and be apart and find your savior where you will only find Him, within yourself, by setting your imagination to observe itself, you must come to the same conclusion – that this ultimate reality that men call God, that the Ancients defined as I AM, is your own wonderful consciousness and that IT in action, or the Son, or Christ Jesus, is your imagination. And then, having discovered, you start really to feed the sheep and you will stop, as of now, this walking of your Savior in the mud.

Now I see my time is up, and so at this moment I’ll take the chair and let us all join in exercising our imagination lovingly on behalf of another. Simply imagine that they are talking to you, and they are telling you what they wish they could tell you, and you listen as though you heard, and then you will put into practice that first verse of the fifth chapter of the Book of Ephesians: “Be ye imitators of God as dear children” – for how would I imitate my Father? “He calls things that are not now seen as though they were, and the unseen becomes seen”. That is the way my Father called things into being, and I am called upon to be an imitator of my Father as a dear child. For now I will call the imaginary voice. I will listen as though I heard what I want to hear. I will look as though I am seeing what I want to see, and if I persist in my listening and my looking, I will then be imitating my Father as a dear child, and he will not fool me. He will call into flesh, into objective reality, that which I have assumed that I have heard and I have seen.
 

Neville Goddard—04/11/1969

“He is our peace, who will make us both one by breaking down the wall of hostility, that he may create in himself one new man in place of the two, so bringing peace.” This being of peace is a person, not a doctrine or philosophy. He is a person who breaks down the wall of hostility between you who are seated here and your true identity, who is a son of God, one with his Father. 

Now, a lady wrote, saying: “I saw myself in vision as radiantly perfect, yet I knew that we were two. Remembering the words ‘Be ye perfect,’ I knew that at one time I was not, but now my present reflection is one of perfection. Then I awoke, got out of bed and stumbled into the door, then lost my temper and yelled at my children for pouring soap on my nice clean carpet. So it must have happened in some other dimension of my being, for I certainly am not perfect here.” She is right. While we wear these garments of flesh and blood, we lose our temper; we run into doors and do all the things people do here. Did not the perfect one, who was the pattern man, call Herod “that fox,” and the scribes and Pharisees “Whited sepulchers, outwardly beautiful and inwardly full of hypocrisy and iniquity”? While you are here, encased in your body of flesh and blood, certainly you will lose your temper. Maybe not as you did before you were perfect, but you will to some degree as long as you remain here. 

Now, how does he who is our peace, break down the wall of perdition and make the two of us one? By fulfilling his primal wish, which was: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” God fell asleep to his true awareness and began a good work in you, which he will bring to completion on the day of Jesus Christ – who is described as being the perfect image of God, one who reflects and radiates God’s glory. When his good work is finished, in you, then you – the image – will be superimposed upon him, and you will know yourself to be the Father. There is only God in the world. Having taken upon himself the limitation of man (as you are) he is working you into his image from within. And when you – the made, are as perfect as he – the Maker, you rise as one man, enhanced by reason of the experience of making an image which radiates and reflects your glory. So her vision was perfect, all based upon scripture. 

Here is another beautiful one. This lady said, “I found myself in a forest, sitting on the ground leaning against a tree, when I heard a voice calling, ‘Father, Father,’ but I did not answer, because I did not want to be discovered. Suddenly you appeared, dressed as a shepherd boy, and said to me: ‘Why did you not answer me? I have been searching for you.’ And I replied: ‘You are always searching and finding me, in spite of the fact that the Good Book says I can rest on the Sabbath day.’ Then you looked at me and smiled the smile of an indulgent father; yet strangely enough, I – very female – felt I was the father.” 

In the 4th chapter of Galatians it is said: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying: ‘Abba! Father!’ But the Father, sound asleep in Man, doesn’t want to be found, although the Son is always calling: “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou, O Lord! Awake!” And when one who is called the Son of God awakens to Fatherhood, he is sent into the world to awaken his brothers, but finds they still want to postpone the day of waking, still wanting to hold onto these little garments of flesh and blood. But I will always find you and will not let you rest, for “Truly, truly I say unto you, the dead will hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear it will live.” This lady heard the voice and recognized it, so she is not far from waking. Sent as a shepherd boy, the son of God does the Father’s will by calling the Father (in Man) to awaken and rise from the dead. 

God entered this world for the sole purpose of making you perfect as he is perfect. When his work is finished, he will superimpose himself upon that image and they will be perfectly one. This lady knew she was perfect. She recalled the words: “Be ye perfect.” The completed sentence is: “as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Yes, be ye perfect for then you become one with your Maker; awake from this dream of life and resurrect from this world of death into a world of eternal life. Without the resurrection you would know infinite circuitry, repeating the same states over and over again. But, after moving around the circle unnumbered times, the perfect image is formed, removing you from the circle to enter a spiral and move up as the person who created it all. 

You can join every doctrine, sign every contract between people and nations; yet you will not know perfection until He (in you) finds you perfect and the two of you become one. So, he who is your peace will make you one with him by breaking down the dividing wall of hostility. Then, without telling others you walk knowing who you really are. If you tell the world, they will only laugh at you because – while in this world, like my friend who had the vision – you will run into a door and lose your temper. Everyone is here for a definite purpose, which is revealed through revelations, thereby giving purpose to the whole of life. Without purpose, what does the world have to offer? If you owned everything that you could buy with money, if you had all the money necessary to live comfortably – and your soul is called, what would it matter? 

The world may call you dead, cremate your body and scatter your ashes, but you are immortal and cannot die. Rather than being dead, you are in a world just like this one, mentally walking the same tracks over again and again. Oh, maybe you will not experience the same situations, but your world will be just as solidly real. You will return to a lovely twenty-year-old form, to marry, and age, and lose your temper as you bump into a door – until your image is so perfect it is superimposed upon its Maker. Then up you go to know yourself to be the one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. That is the great living body of the Risen Lord. It seems incredible, but it is true. You are destined to know yourself to be the creator of the world. You are destined to share in the unity of that one body, that one Spirit, that one Lord, that one God and Father of all. I know, for I have experienced it. I was sent back to tell my experiences in the hope that those who are on the verge of moving into the same body, as the same Spirit, may hear my words and be encouraged by them. 

Paul makes the statement: “I stand before you on trial for the hope in that promise that God made to our fathers. O King Agrippa, why should it seem incredible to any of you that God raised the dead? Is this not the promise to our fathers?” Search the scriptures and you will find that the promise was made in the 46th chapter of Genesis. “The Lord spoke to Israel in visions of the night saying, ‘Jacob, Jacob.'” (As you know, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel which means, a man who rules as God because he knows he is God.) Jacob answers: “Here I am” and the Lord said: “I am God, the God of your father. Fear not to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation. I will go down with you into Egypt and I will also bring you out again.” Egypt is not a little place in North Africa; this world of death is Egypt, where everything appears, waxes, wanes, and vanishes. I have gone down into Egypt with you and I will keep my promise and bring you up. When this world was coming to its end, Paul stood in chains before the prince whose kingdom was fading; but he could not let go of it, and said: “Why do you think it incredible that God raises the dead?” and the king could not answer. 

I tell you: God literally assumed the weaknesses and limitations of the flesh, in order to know you and to make you into his image. And when that image is perfect as He is perfect, you are no longer two, but one. Then you awake from the dream of life and ascend into your true being, called the kingdom of heaven. Our commonwealth is in heaven and we are sojourners in this strange land where we are enslaved. But have faith and set your hope fully upon that moment in time when the image is perfect. Then it will be unveiled within you to reveal you as the being who made it. Though you are the made, you are the Maker; for the Maker breaks down the wall of hostility between you, making you and He one. Then you return to your heavenly state as the one who came down, but greatly enhanced because of your journey into Egypt. 

Having purposely imposed this limitation upon myself, I felt as though I were speaking to another, making requests of him and thanking him for their fulfillment. Now I have no sense of another. I feel only as the one who formed me into his likeness; for when I awoke He and I were not two any more, but one. This lady saw me clothed as a shepherd boy. She saw correctly; for although the Father and the son are one, it is the Spirit of his son who is sent into the heart, crying: “Father, Father.” She heard the cry and knew herself to be not only Man, but a father; yet in this world she is very much a lady. She heard my call, yet not wanting to be disturbed she did not respond; but may I tell you, the son of God will never let the Father rest. He is forever calling: “Awake you sleeper! Why sleepest thou, O Lord?” But the Father in you cannot awaken until he has completed his work. He began it in you and will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 

That day, the image of God himself is formed in you, and you awake to express that image by radiating and reflecting God’s glory. Night after night I am crying and crying to the Father in all; and those who hear my voice will begin to awaken from the dream of life and start their journey back to the being they were before that the world was, to find themselves to be more glorious, more wonderful, than they were when they descended. 

Tonight some friends are here who haven’t heard me speak in a number of years. When they were last with me I was speaking only of the law, as the promise had not fulfilled itself in me. So for their sake let me say: the promise is the law on a higher level, and the law is very simple. 

There are infinite number of states. The state of health, the state of sickness, the state of wealth, the state of poverty, the state of being known, the state of being unknown – all are only states and everyone is always in a state. We all have one state in which we are very comfortable, so we return to it moment after moment. That state constitutes our dwelling place. If it is not a pleasant state, we can always get out of it. How this is done is the secret I will now share with you. All states are mental. You cannot remove yourself from your present state by pulling strings on the outside. You must mentally adjust your thoughts to proceed from the desired state, all within yourself. You fell into your present state either deliberately or unwittingly; and because you are its life, the state became alive and grew like a tree, bearing its fruit which you do not like. Its fruit may be that of poverty, or distress, heartache, or pain. 

There are all kinds of unlovely fruit. But you can detach yourself from your unlovely harvest by making an adjustment in your human imagination. Ask yourself what you would like to harvest. When you know what it is, ask yourself how you would feel if your desire was ready to harvest right now. When you know the feeling, try to catch it. In my own case I find it easier to catch the feeling by imagining I am with people I know well and they are seeing me as they would if my desire were now a fact. And when the feeling of reality possesses me, I fall asleep in that assumption. At that moment I have entered a state. Now, I must make that state as natural as I have made my present state. I must consciously return to my new state constantly. I must feel its naturalness, like my own bed at night. At first the new state seems unnatural, like wearing a new suit or hat. Although no one knows your suit is new, you are so conscious of it you think everyone is looking at you. You are aware of its fit and its feeling until it becomes comfortable. So it is with your new state. At first you are conscious of its strangeness; but with regular wearing, the new state becomes comfortable, and its naturalness causes you to constantly return to it, thereby making it real. 

Now most of us, knowing what we want, construct it in our minds eye, but never occupy it. We never move into the state and remain there. I call this perpetual construction, deferred occupancy. I could dream of owning a lovely home and hope to go there one day; but if I do not occupy it now, in my imagination, I postpone it to another day. I may wish my friend had a better job. I may have imagined him having it; but if I don’t occupy that state by believing he is already there, I have merely constructed the state for him but not occupied it. All day long I can wish he or she were different; but if I don’t go into the state and view him from it, I don’t occupy the state, so he remains in the unlovely state relative to me. This is the world in which we live. 

You can’t conceive of a thing that is not part of a state, but the life of any state is in the individual who occupies it. Life cannot be given to a state from without, because God’s name is “I am.” It is not “You are” or “They are.” God’s eternal name is I Am! That is the life of the world. If you would make a state alive, you must be in it. If you are in a lovely, gentle, kind state, you are seeing another as lovely, living graciously, and enjoying life to the utmost. 
Now, to make that state natural, you must see everyone in your world as lovely, kind, and gentle. Others may not see them in that light, but it doesn’t really matter what they think. I am quite sure if I took a survey of what people think of me, no two would agree. Some would say I am a deceiver, while others I am the nearest thing to God. I would find a range stretching from the devil to God, all based upon the state in which the person is in when called upon to define me. 

You can be what you want to be if you know and apply this principle, but you are the operant power. It does not operate itself. You may know the law from A to Z, but knowing is not enough. Knowledge must be acted upon. “I am” is the operant power in you. Put your awareness in the center of your desire. Persist, and your desire will be objectified. Learn to use the law, because there is a long interval between the law and the promise. Those who heard me prior to 1959 are unfamiliar with my experiences since that time, and my words may seem strange to you. I cannot deny the law, for I came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. This I have done. 

I have told you that in the resurrection, Man is above the organization of sex, and that Man can change his sex at will. This week I received a letter telling of a vision which testifies to the truth of this statement. This gentleman is married to a lovely girl and is every bit a man, yet this is his experience. He said, “I found myself lying on a bed feeling as though I am a woman. Desiring a man of oriental descent and olive skin, I assumed I had found him. Instantly he appeared and, although no act was performed, I felt the thrill of imagining and instant fulfillment of my imaginal act. Then I awoke.” This man’s vision verifies what I have been telling you: that in the resurrection Man changes his sexual garments at will, and being above the organization of sex, he does not need the divine image of male/female to create. I think his vision is marvelous. When he returned to this world, he was surprised at the experience; but I say to all: you are destined to know you are every being in the world, bar none! 

Like the lady who is so feminine, responding when a shepherd boy called her “father”. Although she would not answer my call, she knew I would always find her. I always will, for I – the Word of God – was sent as the son of God, and I shall not return to my father void. I must bring back that purpose for which he sent me. I stirred the feeling of the fatherhood of God in her, and I will take back with me those that my father gave me. 

But while you are in this world of Caesar, it is important that you master the law. Think of everyone as representing a state. There is no such thing as a good man or a bad man, only good or bad states as you conceive them to be; but the occupant of every state is God. Blake said in his “Vision Of The Last Judgment”: “On this it will be seen that I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to everyone of them states of the sleep which the soul may fail into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it leaves Paradise following the serpent.” Identify yourself with a state and you are pronounced by others to be either good or evil; but you are only in a state. Tonight if you are unemployed, or find it difficult to get a promotion in your present employment, remember: the solution to your present state is still a state! 

I hope I have made it clear how to move into states. It is done through the act of assumption with feeling and persistence. Assume health. Stand in its center and clothe yourself with its feeling. Persist in claiming a healthy body and a healthy mind, and your assumption will harden into fact as you move into and objectify the state of health. 

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard

Tonight’s subject is “The Pattern Man.” Paul, in his final letter to Timothy, — when he felt that he was about to depart this world, he wrote Timothy, and he said: “Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me. Guard the truth which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” [II Timothy 1:13, 14]

Paul’s Letters were written twenty-odd years before any other part of the New Testament. The earliest Gospel is Mark; that came twenty-odd years after the Letters of Paul. It was in Paul that the entire story unfolded itself. Paul said: “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, I did not confer with flesh and blood.” [Galatians 1:16,17] To whom would he turn? And he spent his last days, as told us in the Book of Acts, expounding the matter to them [Acts 28:23], “trying to convince them about Jesus, then from the law of Moses and from the prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved.” [Acts 28:23,24]

He found the Pattern. Like every one, we are looking for a man, — some strange being coming out of space to save humanity; and he was one of those who looked for a man. Then he found it was not a man, but a pattern that was buried in man; that God had prepared the way for His sons to return, and the “way” is buried in man as a pattern.

When that pattern unfolded in man, then the one in whom it unfolds realized Who the Coming One really was.

If you take the 39 books of the Old Testament; although they are written across the centuries, they form one book, and events that are widely separated in time are welded into a pattern, and that pattern unfolds within the individual, forming what we call in Scripture “Jesus.” Jesus, then, is the pattern. I call Jesus the Pattern Man.

The first one to use the word “Jesus” is Paul. The first one to use the word “Christ” is Paul. He speaks of Jesus Christ. Well, “Jesus” has the same root as the word “Jehovah,” — the Lord God Jehovah, the same root as that of Jesus; and the word “Messiah” and the word “Christ” are one and the same. So, when he speaks of Jesus Christ, he is speaking of the Lord God Jehovah and His Messiah.

Now, where did he find it in the Old Testament? In the Second Book of Samuel, the 7th chapter, we read these words: “Go to my servant David, and say to David, “When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, –’” which is a euphemism for “Death” — when you are dead and you are buried with your fathers, your forefathers, “‘I will raise up your son after you, who will come forth from your body, . . . I will be his father, and he shall be my son.’” [II Samuel [7:12,14J

Here He tells David that He is going to raise up a son that will come forth from his body, and that He the Lord will be the father of that boy. That son will call Him “Father.”

Now, everyone was looking for the physical descent of someone called David, because they did not understand the great mystery of Scripture. David symbolizes Humanity. The whole vast world of man is symbolized as David, and he will raise up out of man That which will be the Son of God.

Well, you are a man. I am a man. Regardless of our sex, generically we are all Man, whether you be male or female; so, I will raise up out of Man a son that will come forth from his body, but I will be his father, not the man out of which he is raised! I, the Lord, will be his father.

Well, how on earth would you know this unless it happened to you? You can hear it from others, as they heard it from Paul, — as you are hearing it from me. In the early church Paul was known as the Apostle, — not just an apostle, but the Apostle, as though there were no others, because Paul — whoever Paul was; but Paul is that state that everyone must reach. When he reaches that state called “Paul,” then it happens in him, and he is sent to tell it. So, he tells it, hoping to convince those who will listen to him, concerning this great mystery. “And some were convinced by what they heard, while others disbelieved.” [Acts 28:24] He used Scripture to persuade them. He showed them in Scripture what he really meant. As it unfolded in him, then he took Scripture, and this is what it meant. For in me something was raised, but it wasn’t another; it was myself. I found myself buried in myself. When I rose in myself, I came out of this thing you call a man; so the son was raised out of man, which is David. Now, that which came out is my very Being! I came out.

And then in time — in the not-too-distant time after coming out, here I found Humanity personified as the David out of which I came. And Humanity then became my son, but I then was the Father. He simply raised up Himself out of Man. It was the Father who was buried in Man. He raises up out of Man Himself. So that man who was raised can say, I and my Father are one.” [John 10:30]

So, “when you see Me, you see the Father,” for: “I and my Father are one.” [John 1O:3O] We are not two. First there is a father and then a son, and then it is David. — The whole of humanity personified will come out as David.

So, the pattern is buried in man, and God has prepared the way through that pattern for Himself to return. It was God Who came down into humanity. It is God who actually became as we are, that we may be as He is, because it is God who is buried in man.

Now you may say: “Will he suffer as I have suffered?” Well, we are told in Scripture: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” [Matthew 8:17] Well, someone said to me: “After all, he bore my disease, and he took upon himself my infirmities? It is I who suffer. I am suffering — not any other.” And they repeated it: “I am suffering.” Well, who do you think God is? What is His name forever and forever? Is it not revealed in Scripture, “My name forever and forever is I AM” [Exodus 3:15]? And when you go to the people of the world, called Israel, and they ask you: “What is His name?” say to them: “I AM. That is who I AM. This is my name forever.”

So, you say that you are suffering, and not God? You have a false god when you say, “I am suffering, but He is not.” Who is He? His name is I AM. He isn’t pretending that He is you. If He pretended that He is you, that would be God masquerading under a veil of flesh — masquerading as a man. He’s not masquerading as a man; He became man — actually became as you are, that you may be as He is.

So, when He raises up His son through the body, it is you that He raises. And to show you that you are God, He has one more marvelous experience. There are four Mighty Experiences: The first one, He raises up in you as you. That one is simply one side of the coin. The same night that you awake within yourself is the night that you are “born from above.” As you are told in Scripture, “You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless you are born from above. You must be born again.” [John 3:3] So, that is told you.

So, the first night that you awake within yourself, that same night you are “born from above.” Then He unfolds in the next great drama which comes about 139 days later — in my own case it did; so I would say approximately five months later this thing happens, when actually you realize what came out. He raised himself, because it is God.

If God is a father, then God has a son. Then you find His son; and in finding His son as your son, — now you know who He raised up. At first you are aware of being John, if your name is John. And that’s who came out. Then, five months later, when He raises up now His son and you are the father of that son, then you know who actually He raised. He raised Himself as you!

So, there is only God buried in Humanity; therefore there can only be God to be raised. And if God is a father, He has to raise up His son; so the son is made to say in Scripture, “Thou wouldst not leave my soul in hell.” [Acts 2:27] “Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” [Psalm 31:5]

So, here out of man comes the meaning of His promise: “I will raise up your son after you, when you lie down with your fathers.” [II Samuel 7:12] I will be His father, and He shall be my son! So, when you are raised up, you think then: “Am I now the son?” No, not yet. You are the Father, but you do not know it yet; and then 139 days later another explosion of the mind, and this time He raises up the son. But He first raises Himself. You are the Self. Then He raises the son, and you are the father of that that He now raises. Therefore, you are God the Father!

Every one is going to experience it! I don’t care what you have done or what you are planning to or what you are doing now; it’s irrelevant. You may have a dream that you are a billionaire, — well, that is all right. It will all pass away. It means nothing. You may have the dream of being the greatest scientist in the world and bring something into the world completely unknown to man, and receive all the plaudits of the world. It will pass away. It means nothing. This is the only reality: God redeeming Himself. God ventured into death. This world is the world of death. Everything dies. It appears, it waxes, it wanes, and then it vanishes.

Everything in this world comes in, grows, wanes, and disappears. But that which I am talking about is forever.

Eternity came down into Time and buried itself in Time — in man. And He is buried in man. Then in the fullness of time He redeems Himself through a pattern. So, Jesus of Scripture is the Pattern Man! The eternal pattern. There is no other way to the Father. He said, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life; no man cometh unto the Father, except by me.” [John 14:6] There is no other way.

So, when people tell me: “Can it be in this religion, or that religion, or the other religion, or in something other than this?” I reply: “There is no other. There is only one way to the Father, and that way is through this Pattern Man. And Jesus Christ is the Pattern buried in every man.”

Well, Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah — God the Father. And Christ is His Son, the Messiah called David. And David calls him “Father,” calls him, “My God,” calls him, “my Lord.” So, he said, “How did David call me? He called me in Spirit.” “Well, what did he call me? He called me, ‘my Lord.’” Read it in Scripture.

“What think ye of me?” And they answered, “The son of David.” The son of David, — “Then why did David In the spirit call me, ‘my Lord’? If David thus calls me, ‘my Lord,’ how can I be his son?” He is my son, and he symbolizes Humanity, for I, the Pattern Man, — I am buried In every child born of woman, regardless of his race, regardless of his nationality, regardless of anything — I am buried in every one. And in every one, in the fullness of time, I will rise, and will awaken in man as the man in whom I awaken.

He will know it at that moment when I awaken in him; he will simply know that something happened. He will know that he came out of his own skull, which was to him a tomb. He came out of that skull, and he was “born from above”; but he is bewildered. He tries to tell others, and they have no ears to listen to him, for to them he has some strange hallucination. It’s not what they were looking for. “So, don’t bring me any nonsense,” they will say.

Thus, he spent every day from morning to evening just simply expounding the matter to them, trying to testify to them concerning the Kingdom of God, trying to convince them concerning Jesus. [See Acts 28:23] Well, they never heard of Jesus, for the word “Jesus” came into the language only through Paul. But he knew “Jesus” meant “Jehovah.” He’s trying to convince them of the reality of this Self-existent Being called Jehovah. He named it “Jesus.” YOD HE YAU is the root of it. And then some were convinced by what he said, because he used Scripture. Well, the only Scripture he could have used in those days was the Old Testament, for there was no New Testament. The first books of the New Testament are the 13 Letters of Paul, and they preceded the next book of the New Testament by at least twenty-odd years, which is the Gospel of Mark. That book was written twenty-odd years after these Letters of Paul. And Paul’s first letter is Galatians.

In Galatians he tells us, “When it pleased God to reveal His son in me –” The preposition is “in,” not “to,” — but “in me.” “– I did not confer with flesh and blood.” [Galatians 1:16] To whom could I turn? A Freudian? To one who studied with Jung or one who studied with Adler? What could they tell me? What on earth could any man in this world tell me if he is going to rationalize based upon his concept of Jung or Adler or Freud or any other doctor? They do not know. Well, here, the whole thing is buried in man.

So, just imagine someone who knew his Old Testament backwards, he had committed it to memory, he knew it; a learned man was Paul. And then he studied and studied but couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find the answer as he studied it. But, then, it erupted within him. That tree had never yet borne fruit, and suddenly the Tree of Life began to unfold within him, and the fruit unfolded within him. Well, he is the Tree of Life, and he is bearing fruit, — he is bearing a son; and the son is Humanity calling him “Father”.

I say to you, what I’ve told you tonight and will continue to tell you to the ends of time, — I see no other reason for my being here, other than to tell my experience. I was sent, as he was sent, — whoever he was. He was called by the word “apostle” because he was sent. That is what the word “apostle” means; one who is sent. You don’t volunteer. You don’t do it for yourself. You can’t send yourself. You are sent. You are called and sent. So, to be called is also to be sent. I was called into that assembly and sent. At the moment, I did not know why I was sent. I only knew I was sent. Then came the experience thirty years later. That’s why I was sent, in preparation for the experience, that I simply may take the barnacles off this ship and set it once more straight, even though there are only a few to hear it. What does that matter? There were only a few who heard him, if you read Scripture carefully, — just a few.

At the end of his days, he spent the time in his own little home from morning till night; and those who would come, he simply took Scripture and showed them where what happened to him was foretold In Scripture. But no one reading Scripture could have seen it that way, for trained as they were, they were looking for a man — some unique man to come from without, and were told that, by some miraculous, fantastic way, was the leader of men, and that he would save man, — as Hitler said he would and as Stalin said he would, and Karl Marx said he would. They were all “outside” saviors. There is no “outside” savior. The Savior is within you. He is buried within you as a pattern; and when the pattern unfolds, it is not another unfolding, it is you unfolding. He unfolds in you as you.

You are the one who finds himself awakening within your own grave, which is your skull. It is you who comes out of that skull like one being born. It is you who stands before Humanity personified as the son called David, and he calls you — not another; he calls you “Father.” Then you read Scripture, and in Scripture David calls God “Father,” fulfilling what God said he would do.

He said, “I will raise up your son after you. He shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and you [sic] shall be my son” [II Samuel 7:12,14]; and then David is made to say: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: he said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’” [Psalm 2: 7]

So, the whole thing unfolds, and you go back and read Scripture — you have read it before. How on earth could any man ever have understood it until in the fullness of time it unfolded within him? When it unfolded in a man, that man knew what Scripture intended all along. Then you tell it to those who are still looking for some external savior, and they are still looking for him; so they turn their backs upon you, and they will not believe you.

This is a repeated pattern over and over and over. Some believed — a few believed, but others disbelieved. I’ll find that until the ends of my days. He returns to Timothy and tells Timothy to “follow the pattern of the sound words –.” [II Timothy 1:13] He took the entire 39 books and events widely separated in time, and he brought them together to form the pattern. He found some in the early parts of Genesis, and then some in the Book of Samuel; then he found some in the Book of Psalms, in Jeremiah; he took these patterns and wove them together, and they all unfolded within him.

There was a promise in the beginning. He found that in the early parts of Genesis. He promises a child — a child that would prove something. That’s the son coming, just a son. Then he tells you: “Here’s another sign: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” That is in the Book of Exodus. And, then, that happens to you. “To me in this same manner?” Yes, it’s going to happen to you.

It happened to me. Like a fiery serpent I was lifted up; and here is something that recorded it thousands of years ago. The whole thing is contemporary. It is an eternal drama that is taking place. One is drawn into that eternal drama, and then it unfolds within him.

I like to repeat it in this manner: If you can conceive of an action — a simple action that is forever taking place, like an eternal command, — something to be done absolutely and continuously. It’s like — well, the imperative passive mood; something that is done absolutely, but at the same time continuously, without reference to the completeness of the action or the incompleteness of the action, without reference to its duration, without reference to its repetition, without reference to its position in time. It is simply taking place in Eternity. And then you are drawn by this like a magnet; and as you are drawn into it — because it is a simple act talked about in Scripture, the action unfolds within you, for it is already in you. You are drawn into it, and it unfolds within you. You are the one having the experience.

You don’t see it as something on the outside. You are experiencing the action. And when the whole thing unfolds within you, you go back to Scripture, and then you see that this is what was said anyway. This is what was prophesied would happen, but you thought it was going to happen to another.

I thought it happened two thousand years ago to one called Jesus. Now I see that Jesus is a pattern. Jesus is the Pattern Man buried in every man; and when that pattern unfolds in man, man is Jesus! Well, Jesus is the Lord, — the Lord God Jehovah. So, there is no room for another god. There is only God.

So, when asked, “What is the greatest commandment in the world?” he replied: “Hear, 0 Israel. The lord, our God, the Lord is one. There is no greater commandment.” You can’t have two gods — only one. But one God becoming us unfolds in us, and we are that one God! So, in the end, we are all one; for if the same son calls you “Father” that called me “Father,” are we not one?

You are not going to have another son. You are going to have the same son — the identical son calling you, “Father.” Well, if he calls you, “Father,” and he really is your son, and he has already called me, “Father,” and I know he is my son; then you and I, though we differ in identity, — we still are one. We simply are only one. “Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.”

There can’t be a second god, or other gods. But in the end, everyone in this world will form “one body, . . . one spirit, . . . one Lord, . . . one God and Father of all.” [Ephesians 4:4]

Now, this is far more important than to tell you how to make a million, which is a simple thing for you if you really want it and you are willing to give the time to it. Those who came here tonight, thinking that that would be part of tonight’s talk, — then for your benefit, I will tell you a story. I have repeated it unnumbered times, but I will tell it again if you are here for that purpose:

Your own wonderful human imagination is the being that I speak of when I speak of God. When I say, “God became as we are, that we may be as He is,” I am speaking of your imagination. And you cannot get away from your imagination. “And by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” [John 1:3] That’s your imagination.

There isn’t a thing in this world that you see now and call it a fact that wasn’t first only imagined: the building; the clothes you wear; the chairs on which you are seated; this little mike; — everything was first only imagined, and then executed. Well, if all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made, — good, bad or indifferent, try to find some other maker than your own wonderful human imagination. Try to find it. You may say: “Edison did it” — in his imagination; “Einstein did it” — in his imagination. Show me one other instrument other than the human imagination that conceived anything in this world, and that is God. “If all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made,” then you conclude that He must be the human imagination.

So, I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is the God of Whom I speak! That is the Being that actually will awaken within you. But, now, to get things in this world, assume that you are. “All things are possible to Him.” Assume that you are the man that you want to be — or the woman that you want to be. And, although at the moment of your assumption your reason and your senses deny it, if you dare to persist in that assumption as though it were true, that assumption — in a way unknown to your rational, conscious mind — will harden into fact. It knows how to actually build that series of events necessary to make it so in your world.

If you really want to be what you call “secure”, — say, in finances, dare to assume that you are secure, and live as though you were; sleep as though you were; and then it will happen in your world that will cause you to leave your present environment and move on into the state that you have assumed. If you wait for things to change before you dare to assume, you will wait forever. Circumstances cannot change of themselves. You change them by changing your concept of Self.

To attempt to change the world before you change your own imaginal activity is to struggle against the very nature of things. Now, you say: “Well, I am reaping these things in my world, and I didn’t make them.” No, — you have forgotten the blossom time. What you are now reaping is simply the fruit of some forgotten blossom time. You have a very faulty memory. We all have. We can’t remember when we set in motion what we are now reaping as a harvest; but everything in our world was once planted as an imaginal act, and it has not a physical cause, — it has an imaginal cause. Every natural effect in this world has an imaginal cause, and not a natural cause. A natural cause only seems; it is the delusion of a faulty memory, because man cannot remember the blossom time when he actually set it in motion.

If you will try that; then if you came tonight to hear something more practical, then that is the practical side of this teaching. But may I tell you, I consider that what is most profoundly spiritual is most directly practical. For, if you really give all your attention to this pattern, “and set your hope fully on this unveiling of The Christ you,” it will be far more profitable than seeking to become rich in the world. If this thing should only unfold within you, then the world is yours. You don’t have any desire for the fantastic claims that people make in this world.

So, if you really give all your attention to the hope, as Peter said, — “Set your hope fully upon the glory, upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” [I Peter 1:13] If Jesus Christ is already in me, as told me in the Letters of Paul, then I can only wait for the unveiling of that Jesus Christ within me. And this is the hope that makes it wisdom to go after the burdens of this long, dark night of time.

So, you find yourself in pain, find yourself limited by some infirmity for a little while; bear in mind: “He took upon Himself our infirmities and bore our diseases.” and His name is I AM. So, when you say that I am doing it all by myself and He is not bearing it with me, remember: His name is I AM. And I AM, which is the real name of God, became as limited as you are, and now bears your infirmities and your diseases; and He does the suffering. But in the end, He will awaken in you as you, and you will be the Lord Jesus; and your son will bear witness of your fatherhood, and He is the Messiah in Scripture, as told us in Samuel and told us in the Psalms. And when you meet him, his name is David. You are the Lord Jesus, and David called you — the Lord Jesus — “my Father.” He calls you, “my Lord.” He calls you, “my God,” for that is the story of Scripture.

Man has been completely educated out of it and he brings his prefabricated misconceptions of Scripture to a message of this nature. Well, it doesn’t dovetail with what he has been taught; therefore, he goes away saying, “I didn’t hear it,” or “I don’t care for it.” He still wants his external god to whom to pray; and if his prayers are not answered, then he will say to himself that God did not think it wise to grant his prayer, — in spite of the fact that we are told whatever we ask for will be granted. He didn’t say if it was good for you; he just said you should ask for it, but he made this statement: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will.” Read it in the 11th chapter of the Book of Mark. [Mark 11:24] “Whatever you ask, believe that you have received it, and you will.”

“If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know we have obtained the request made of Him.” Read that in the First Epistle of John, the 5th chapter, 15th verse. These are statements made by the Awakened Man. Therefore, if the prayer is not answered, you are praying to a wrong god. But if you know that the God to Whom you pray is your own wonderful human imagination, then instead of begging, you appropriate.

You appropriate the state; so I call it the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. What is my objective hope? Well, I appropriate it subjectively. I “go within” and I simply appropriate it. I simply assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled. I appropriate it; and if my wish fulfilled were true, how would I see the world in which I live? and then do everything to make me see it as I would see it if it were: see the people in my world as I would have to see them, and let them see me as they would be compelled to see me if what I am doing is an actual external fact. If they know me and I know them, and something happens in my life that becomes public knowledge, — well, then, they would know it. Then let them see me as they would have to see me if it were true. So, the subjective appropriation of the objective hope is prayer. You don’t beg any one. Don’t ask anyone. You simply appropriate it. For, if He is in me, where would I go to ask Him?

As we are told, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” [II Corinthians 13:5] Then test yourselves to see if you really realize it. Put yourself to the test If I say, “Jesus Christ,” and your mind jumps on the outside to something other than yourself, you have failed the test, for you are told: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? — unless, of course,” said he, “you fail to meet the test!” Well, you have just had the test. So, when I use the words, “Jesus Christ,” and something on the outside comes to you, you have failed the test!, for Jesus Christ is in you. If I go to Him in my prayer, where would I go but to myself? He became as I am, that I may be as He is. He actually became me. He is in me as my own wonderful human imagination, for “by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made,” [John 1:3] so I go within and appropriate the state.

So, the subjective appropriation of my objective hope is my prayer. And having appropriated it, I drop it, as I would the seed into the earth. The seed must fall into the earth and rot before it can be made alive. Well, just drop it, and then in its own good time it will come into harvest. It takes an interval of time between my appropriation and its fulfillment; so having done it, I drop it, and go about my “Father’s business” appropriating other states — not only for myself, but for myself pushed out,” which I call “others.” For, in the end, there is Only One.

One day we will know that you and I are one, for you must be the same Being that I am, though we are individualized, and we will remain individualized. But you must be the Being that I am, because you are the Father of my son. How on earth could you be the Father of my son and not be as I AM? So, I will know you — know you in Eternity as who you are, a friend; I will know you as my brother, but I will also know you as God. Every one, in the end, I will know as God — the Only God, but I will know them as my brother and know them as my friend. All will be God. Not one will be lost, — in spite of all that is said to the contrary.

There is no hell waiting for you. There is only an infinite body of Love — an infinite body of Perfection, which one day you will wear; and wearing it, nothing can remain in your presence that is imperfect. As you walk by — as you glide by, everything will be molded in harmony with the perfection that is springing within you. You do not need a realm called Heaven. You are Heaven. The body you will wear will be perfect, and in it presence nothing can remain imperfect. And that’s Heaven!

So, if you went into the hell of hells, it would be automatically and instantaneously transformed into Heaven. So, you don’t need love; all you need is the Body of the Risen Lord within you. And when He rises within you, that body is an infinite body of Love and Perfection.

So, here the Pattern, I know from experience, is buried in man. It’s the way of escape from the world of death into the world of Eternity. And that Pattern was built into man before the foundation of the world. He prepared the way for His own escape; end when the time is fully come to depart this world, as Paul said, “The time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,” [II Timothy 4:6-8] and now Paul is about to depart. But in his departure he spends his time from morning to evening expounding the matter to them, trying to convince them about Jesus, trying to testify to the Kingdom of God, and using Scripture to support his argument — both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. And some believed what he said and some disbelieved; and everyone who comes into this same state of consciousness where the Pattern unfolds within him is going to find the same crowd, some believing and some disbelieving, until one day it happens in them; and they too will be confronted with those who will believe them and disbelieve them. And it will go on and on until the end when all are redeemed. When all are redeemed, it is by the one Pattern; so I say there is no other way of redemption.

When people tell me diets will do it or meditation will do it or this other -ism will do it, or some other savior, — there is no other savior. The Savior is a Pattern, and the Pattern is in man, and it’s called in Scripture. “Jesus.” There is no other way. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” [John 14:6] “I am the resurrection and the life.” [John 11:25] No one comes to the Father, except by me.” [John 14:6] The one speaking in these quotations is the Pattern Man, and until this Pattern unfolds in man, he remains in the world of death. Well, when it unfolds within him, he is that which unfolds within him. He is the Lord Jesus. Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah.

And because He is the Father, there must be a son; and the son stands before him, which is the sum total of Humanity with all its experiences personified, and that infinite beauty is called David. He is the David of Biblical fame, and he calls you “Father.”

Now let us go into the Silence.

Last night after the meeting a lady asked me if I would touch on what I said earlier about who saw Him. He appeared first to Peter, and then to the Twelve, then to five hundred, and then to James, then to the Apostles, and finally to Paul. Well, I will touch it just briefly, for her sake.

When He appears, it is simply the man in whom the Pattern has awakened. It is that man, whether you can him by a Biblical name or by any other name, — anyone in whom the Pattern of Redemption awakes is that man called “Jesus.” But you may know him in this world as George or Peter or Neville, or any other name. I know in my own case they must now start. It has already started. Those who see me in spirit as the Being that I am claiming that I am — I am claiming it only because it has happened in me. I am not speculating. I am not theorizing. The whole thing has unfolded itself in me.

There is a gentleman here tonight whose wife had this experience this week and wrote me this letter. She says, “I had this wonderful experience where you gave this banquet. It was beautifully done and very formal. On your right sat one who seemed to have been, or should have been, an apostle. He was well dressed. I sat to your left. I knew the truth of what he was saying, but he was hysterical, because it struck him funnily. He told you that he had a dream that you were Jesus Christ, and then he started to laugh in a strange, disbelieving manner; and he kept on laughing as he repeated the dream that he had.”

She said, “I knew that the dream that he had was true, and in spite of the fact that it was a dream, he didn’t think it true. He disbelieved it completely. But I knew it was true.”

Well, that’s Scripture. She is a lady. In the end of the Book of Luke it is the woman who comes to the Apostles, and it is the woman who said, “He is risen,” [Luke 24:34] and the apostles thought it an idle tale [See Luke 24.11], and they did not believe it. There’s your story. She believed it, and she was not judged among the apostles. He was judged among the apostles, the man who sat at my right, the honored position at the table, and did not believe it.

The apostles named in Scripture were not sent until after. They were told, “Remain in the city until you are imbued with power from above.” They had not yet received the gift of the Holy Spirit; so they could not be sent.

So, they are coming. One after the other are coming to make that number. First He appears to Peter. Well, I told you who was Peter in my case — a little girl 8 years old, Maylo. She was the one who saw the thing in detail. Then came others. Now they are gathering. No bragging about it. If it happened in me, it happened in me. There is not a thing I’ve done to warrant it. It’s Grace. It is a gift — unwarranted, unearned. It is God’s gift.

Grace is God’s gift of Himself to man which man did not earn. He did not merit it. It’s a gift. So, no one can brag. So, if it happened in me, which it has, I cannot brag; but I do know there must be witnesses to confirm that it did happen in me. And his wife — he is sitting right here; his wife was one who actually witnessed it this past week.

Are there any other questions, please?

LADY: Yes. When you meditate, I understand you raise your chin.

NEVILLE: It has no significance. If I raise my chin for one moment, it really has no significance. If I do it, I am not aware of it. I turn my attention inwards — into my skull, and I ask no favors of any one. I simply go in. If I have nothing at the moment to appropriate, I just simply — for the joy of looking on the inside to watch the golden clouds form. They always form like a halo around the head. It’s a simple matter, as though the whole dark convolutions of the brain grow luminous. And it takes no time for them to become luminous. So, I simply observe them. If I go for a purpose, while there I appropriate my gift or appropriate my wish. But if I raise my chin, my dear, don’t think for one second that it has any significance. So, don’t duplicate any physical action. Imitate the action in this sense: Go within. Close your eyes to the outer world. Go within, and center your entire attention within your skull. That’s where He is! That is where your True Being is.

THE LADY: (A further question about meditating, and that in a class a bishop told her not to lower her head, but keep her chin up when she meditates.)

NEVILLE: Well, my dear, if he said it to you and you believed it, I personally have nothing to say. I only will tell you this much: Your physical posture means nothing. There are people here in the western world who have no training for the lotus posture, and yet there are people coming from the East who insist that they get on the floor and sit right on the floor and get into a tight posture and they cannot even unlock themselves afterwards. Now, I would like to take the same Eastern man and put him into a western posture, and he won’t be able to unlock himself either! It’s all nonsense. So, I must do what the Eastern man does!

He comes over here, and he came to L.A. and got $500 from each person to take a course with him. He was the “holy of house.” So, someone asked him on TV. “Why do you advertise yourself so? Jesus never did.” And he giggled and giggled and said, “Well, that’s why he took so long to get started!” And he’s a holy man! And all these people with lots of money — well, you see, money doesn’t care who owns it; so they have fortunes and they give him $500 to teach them how to sit in the lotus posture and become holy. They are just as unholy today as when they gave him the $500, — only he is richer. He has gone back to his little ashram in India with all of the tens of thousands that he got from the people here who were as stupid as they come.

No physical posture. If you feel comfortable lying on your back, lie on your back. If you are a Catholic — as you said, you were raised a Catholic and you bowed your head in a certain adoration, with a certain feeling of devotion, go ahead. Do anything that is to you natural. If you want to put your hands on your knee and they will remain comfortable and alert, put them on your knee. Do whatever is natural to you. But all this nonsense that you must do this, do that, — and they all live double lives anyway. You must eat that, and you can’t eat the other thing. But don’t follow him into his little ashram, because you will see him eating what he has told you not to eat!

I recall a man who was the physical culturist of the day. I am going back now to the 20’s. He was quite the boy. He had a magazine called “Physical Culture,” and he had all these things. He was against eating meat, and he was going to live to be a thousand, but he didn’t; he dropped off when he was 68 or so. And he did all kinds of things.

Well, a friend of mine was a waiter in the rooms, and this man had a huge suite of rooms. Well, he put in his order, and my friend — being the waiter — carried his order. He had a steak that big; but he ate it behind locked doors. So, he had his huge big steak and all the things that washed it down, while in his magazine he said meat was anathema, — you must not do these things. So he sold the magazines to all the people, and they believed he did what he preached.

A GENTLEMAN: What does the scripture “to one untimely born” mean?

NEVILLE; “To one untimely born”; that is what Paul said in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians. He meant that it came so shockingly suddenly that there was no warning of labor pains. “One untimely born, and God revealed His son to him.” It came just like that — as told us, “like a thief in the night,” — no warning. So, let no one tell you they can see your aura and therefore you are right on the verge of it. What nonsense! I can see all kinds of auras for you if you pay me enough! So, they see this, see that, see the other. Forget all this nonsense. When it happens, it happens suddenly and unexpectedly, so that as Paul said, “It came to me as one untimely born,” — because in my own case twelve years ago in this city I, too, could have said, “untimely born,” for here I

End of source document.

Neville Goddard—11/10/1959

Here we believe firmly that Imagining is God; that the Supreme Power of the Universe is one with human Imaging. So, when you read the Bible – a fabulous, inspired book – and you come to the word “God” you can also use the word “Imagining” and you will get a clearer understanding of it.

Romans 4:20 – “No distrust made him (Abraham) waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” When you read it you might think of some being external to your own Imagination. Could you now dream of being the man or woman you want to be? That dream is a promise. We are told he was not swerved by anything in the world and gave all the glory to God, or Imagining; fully convinced that God could do what he had promised.

If you believe what the churches teach you may think that you are not entitled to the good that you desire (read Romans 1:20) Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the Immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles . . . “and then they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

I tell you that he is speaking of this immortal being in everything that was made. Even the suit you are wearing. Someone has to first imagine it. The thing first imagined is the invisible image and then it becomes externalized as a hat or a suit or a house. Today a friend called me concerning a personal problem. She said, “You said your father has objective vision. He could see the images of his imagining as real as the forms of Nature.” I knew this is true. The whole vast world that he built for his ten children, he built out of his wonderful imagination. He would sit alone and conjure before him men and women and see situations as he wanted to see them. And then he would arrest that state just before sleep and he controlled it completely. And when he later returned to his offices and these things came to pass, he was not surprised. Others set the deals in motion that he had already seen in his mind’s eye.

This lady called to tell me about her sister’s husband. Her father had opposed the marriage and had said that this man would never be any good, and he had set forth in detail just what he would do. He said, “He will father your child but he will not support it. He will live in a bar and he will always be worthless.” This man has fulfilled that prophesy in every detail. Her father was a powerful figure in the theater and disliked his son-in-law and prophesied his future and it has come true in detail. I told this lady a story about a prophesy of my father’s years ago.

In 1919 at the turn of the year, I can see my father at the head of the table and all of us children sitting there and he said to my mother, “There will be a war in 20 years, Wilsey. It will be in the fall. Germany will again be at war with England. Japan will be in it, and Russia and Italy. America will be our great ally.” My mother looked around the table at her sons and said, “My boys will be of the age to go to that war. What are you talking about? He said, “It will be true and already all the ships are discussing it.” He was a ship’s chandler and talked with many people. My father did not know that this power he had of imagining as God.

He could take a man or woman or a community and see them so vividly in imagining in his own living room that they became objective to him, and afterwards find them coming to his office to propose what he had inwardly set in motion. But he did not identify that power that creates his world with this supreme power that he called God. “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, his eternal power, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” My father saw everything as made. He discussed a program with a man and afterward the man comes to him and proposes the deal that my father had already closed in his Imagination. But he did not identify it with God. “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man . . . and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

Everyone here – your invisible presence is God, but if you imagine money into being and you make a million, suddenly you worship the million, not the power that made it possible. You enter a certain social circle and then you forget that you brought it into being by imagining and now you think this group is what is all-important. So man forgets and exchanges the glory of the immortal God for the image of a mortal man or something that vanishes. For everything visible will vanish; but you will not vanish. Even this great land will one day be washed by the sea but you will not be. That which brought things into being cannot cease to be. So we are warned.

I told this lady about my father and she said. “Your father did that in 1919, but I will go back to 1919, and my father said, “I do not want to buy a paper because I can see the headlines and they say WAR!” He was so determined and convinced that he would not buy one for weeks, and when he did finally buy it, the headline said, WAR! Then the lady asked if her father’s attitude towards the sister’s husband had determined what happened, and whether she should continue helping her sister who was always in need. Yes, it determined what happened. But now it could be changed radically. Give to the sister if she needs help. But then I told her that this power is all imagining and it is one tissue with our own wonderful Imagination. There is only ONE. We do not differ in nature or substance from IT but only in degree of intensity. If we could imagine anything in the world and not swerve and not turn and give all glory to this power called God, nothing could keep it from coming into being.

God speaks to man through the language of dreams, but I do not have to go to sleep to dream. I can imagine something for you and desire it with all my heart. If I imagine something for another, that is God speaking to me. I do not have to see a face. There is such difference between what the churches call God and what the mystic knows is God. Blake speaks of Christianity in the last chapter of his great work “Jerusalem.” He breaks it into four chapters, like the four rivers, etc., and he tells us:

“I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.”

And then he defines Christianity. Articles of Faith? He completely discounts them. He says, “I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty of both body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. Imagination, the real and eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our eternal or Imaginative Bodies when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.”

No other Christianity than the right to exercise the divine arts of Imagination. So I say to you, “I would like so and so. I am too close to the picture, so would you now exercise the divine art and hear so and so for me?” And you say to me, “Will you hear something for me? Imagine you have told me that what you want is now so, and give all the glory to the power that creates in this world.” I have personally done this unnumbered times. It is the only Christianity in the world. It has nothing to do with any church. The only Christianity is the liberty to exercise the divine arts of Imagination. Can I do it? Who is doing it? God is doing it! I do not have to make any form. The supreme power of the universe is one with human Imagination.

If we go back to the Old Testament and take the word “maker,” it means Imagination. “Your maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name,” The word “Potter” means Imagination. “I went down to the potter’s house and he was working at his wheel, and the vessel in his hand was spoiled, but he worked it into another vessel such as seemed good to him.” If I would only take that and use the word “Imagination,” but the translator could not bring himself to use it.

What is in my mental hand that I am making? If it is not good and I do not revise it, then I am turning my wheel and recreating that same picture, but if I am a wise potter I will change it and hear you tell me that you now have what you desire. I will make a new vessel. Who is doing it? The potter – and that is Imagination. All day long I think the same thing over and over. I am working at the wheel of recurrence. Everyone here can be the man or woman they want to be. I know it from my own family. Have you ever noticed how if you go into a business and take all the facts and estimate just how things will come out, how often they come about as you said. Who did it? You are not a prophet, but you are imagining, and the state then comes true. Not a thing is brought into being by any power outside itself. It is sustained by the activity of the one who brought it into being. So, if I brought in poverty it can only remain as long as I am conscious of being poor. The moment I cease to imagine that I am poor then things begin to change.

There was a play on Broadway called, “The Millionairess,” and a critic wrote sarcastically that Kathryn Hepburn was trying to impress us with the fact that all a pauper needs to become rich is the arrogance of wealth. He was wiser than he knew! The arrogance of wealth is all he needs to stop being a pauper. You walk in a state and it is an activity of mind and to the degree you can sustain it, to that degree you will create it. The whole world is nothing but God and God is Imagining and man is Imagination and “We dwell in him and he in us, and we are one.”

Now you try it. You take something tonight. If you are too close to your own picture, do it for someone else and see that one as he would like to be seen by himself and then remain faithful to it. He may never know you did it for him, but that doesn’t matter. When the thing happens so naturally that he will never think that what you did was responsible. He has exchanged the glory of God for an image resembling mortal man. He will say he met a certain person and they influenced someone else, or recommended him, and that brought it all to pass. These things get the credit and he forgets immortal God.

I have told you the story before of a friend who came to me because he desperately needed a larger income, etc., to care for the educational needs of his family. His present bank position held no hope of advancement. I taught him what to do and while I was absent in Barbados he did it and when I returned, he told me he had secured this fabulous position with the Rockefeller Foundation, where he still is. But as time went on, he is so literal minded, that he began to forget how it came about and now he gives full credit to the man who spoke to him in church and finally asked him to come into the Foundation. This man is now a powerful person in my friend’s mind and is the cause of his good fortune. He has transferred the glory that belongs to God to the image of a man.

No matter what you are doing, can you see clearly what you want to do and carry on a conversation inwardly with a friend which will imply that which you desire is now a fact? Then do it. For on higher levels of Imagining inner activity is revealed by inner conversation. If man would listen to what he is inwardly saying, he would know what he is setting in motion. As man walks the street if he would pause and say “what am I saying now?” he would find that 99% are justifying failure. But we are told, “You are without excuse for you have seen him and his work, yet you deny it.” When you hear the word God or Jesus Christ you think of some being external to your own imagining, but there is none for Imagining is God. That is what lights every being in the world, and as you imagine, so you will become.

So no matter what your present limitations are, you can start now to dream the most noble dream, and you can walk through this door tonight as though it is true knowing that your Imagining is God. There is no fiction. You can write your own novel and realize it. Even someone in a dungeon may be imagining and who knows what he may call forth. If I were in a dungeon I would move the world if necessary to get out. A body may be physically confined, but you cannot confine God. Man only sees the proximate cause; the real cause of something you cannot see; for the invisible power is what is creating. Who knows who may convulse the world. It may even be a woman “treading” in the wine press.

Everyone here, you can be what you want to be, no matter what your dream is, if you are willing to let God do it, God being your own Imagining. You walk completely suspended above appearances and you will become what you desire. This is the only Christianity I know – the freedom to exercise this divine art of Imagining. Now you try it. If you are here for the first time I challenge you to disprove it. Everyone has the same power. Because one has a million does not make him any more a creator than you are. Be careful what you are imagining for what you are Imagining you will create, though it may convulse the world. I hope you have the Revised Version of the Bible for it is from what I have quoted tonight. It is more accurate in meaning if not as orally beautiful as the King James Version.

You will find in Romans that recreation for it all, for after Acts Paul lays the foundation and he states, “I am a child of Abraham and one of the tribe of Benjamin. But he sees it now not as the code but the spirit, and he sees circumcision no longer as only a physical act. He realizes that he is now a true Christian. He did not go to any church. He sees now the spirit of the law and not the letter. You cannot be born a Christian! It is a way of life that you adopt. You could be born in the Vatican with the Pope as your father and you would not be a Christian. You can only be a Christian when you see the reality and adopt it as a way of life. The law was given to man but they break through from the letter of the law and find the spirit of it and live by it, and that is Christianity. There are many religions based on many ‘isms” but that is not Christianity. It is the liberty of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of Imagination.

This lady can change the picture for her sister’s husband. She can imagine that he is now generous, because now he has so much that he wants to give to her as she gave to him, and she can break the spell cast on him. I know my mother when she darned our socks dreamed for each of us of a future of which she would be proud. Everyone of us is living a noble life and I know she dreamed it for all of us. She never spared her shoe, wham! If you did something wrong. She left the world with her dream fixed in her mind and it came true. We can dream for ourselves or for our neighbors and that dream is the voice of God, for God speaks to man through the medium of a dream.

Neville Goddard—09/22/1967

You will find this a very practical night, for I feel that the truth of the working of God’s law should be looked upon as intensely as anything in this world. So tonight I want to show you quite clearly how God’s law operates.

We are told in the 14th chapter of John: ‘Let not your heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? When I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also.’ You may think some man is speaking to a group of men as I am here; but these words were spoken by the human Imagination, who – having come out from the Father, came into the world. Now leaving the world, human imagination is going to the Father’s house. He is returning to discover the source, the cause, of the phenomena of life. 

Jesus Christ, your own wonderful human imagination, is the way to everything in the world – but specifically to the Father. Tonight we will take this thought on a practical level so that everyone will know how to bring into this world everything he wants, no matter what it is.

Today billions of dollars are being spent on anti-poverty programs; yet the one consuming thing we need (which will not cost one nickel) is a new Christology, a new way of thinking of Christ as the human imagination! Christ is the cause of everything, but as long as the churches mislead the world – by teaching he is on the outside as one who lived and died 2000 years ago to whom you should turn and pray – you will never find him. Poverty can never be overcome on the outside, no matter how much money is given to the poor. Only when the poor man is told that he is the source of all life and taught how to turn and pray to himself, will he overcome poverty. So the outstanding need is to teach this new Christology, to tell everyone you meet that Christ is the human imagination, for without this knowledge – I don’t care what you do – you will never bring your desires into fulfillment. 

In my Father’s house are unnumbered mansions. Unnumbered states of consciousness. If it were 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 to myself, that where I am you may be also. In this statement Imagination is telling you he is the Father for ‘No one comes to the Father but by me.’ Only when you come to the awareness that your human imagination is the phenomenon, the source of all life, will you find the Father.

In the 60th plate of his poem, ‘Jerusalem,’ Blake speaks of the tower of Babel. I am sure you are all familiar with the story of how the tower contained multiple voices so that no one understood the other. Today, even though we and those in Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia live in what is referred to as democratic countries, we do not mean the same kind of democracy. To us democracy is based upon the principle of compromise, but not the compromise of principle as they do. So the world is Babel and Blake makes this statement: ‘Babel 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.’ (Here Blake calls his own human imagination, ‘Lord’) saying: ‘when thou ariseth upon.’ In the morning when Imagination ariseth and the eye awakens, you see the familiar objects about as life itself arises. The world is animated by your human imagination. If it did not return in the morning you would be called dead, for life is nothing more than an activity of imagining. So Blake continues, saying: ‘when thou ariseth upon my eyes, even in this dungeon, this iron mill.’ You see, Blake saw the physical garment as a dungeon, a mill of iron.

But your Imagination knows all, is all, and is all powerful! If you should forget something, knowing that your own imagination is Jesus Christ, say: ‘Thank you Father that you always hear me.’ Do that and in the matter of moments the thought will return. Recognize your own wonderful human imagination as the only God, the only Lord Christ Jesus, for besides him there is no other. So the outstanding need this day is for a new Christology, a new knowledge of Christ, a completely new thinking of the human imagination. Until this is done unnumbered billions will be appropriated to fight poverty to no avail. You can never give a poor man enough to satisfy him, and the day you stop giving he will cut your throat.

In our little island of Barbados we had a neighbor who had a cow. (Now, when I was young if you wanted milk you either kept a cow or a goat.) His cow had a calf and produced more milk than the neighbor could use, so the maid was sent to offer the excess milk – at no charge – to Mr. Seeon, a neighbor. He was delighted to receive it and was given his quart of milk every day until the cow was once more with calf and was dried up for the oncoming delivery. When Mr. Seeon was told that there would be no milk for about four weeks, he said: ‘If you knew you couldn’t keep me supplied with milk all of the time, you should have never given it to me in the first place. You have conditioned me to a quart of milk a day and now I have none.’

May I tell you: Mr. Seeon is simply representative of the world to whom you give. Try giving someone something on a monthly or yearly basis, then stop it, and you will find yourself his enemy. Knowing what you did in the past, he will hate you because you are not continuing to provide for him. But you can give him a new Christology by telling him that he doesn’t need you. That the source of all the phenomena of life is in him; that source is his own wonderful human imagination who is Jesus Christ.

Instead of teaching the true Christ, the churches tell of a Christ Jesus who lived and died two thousand years ago. They teach that he is still suffering for them even though they, themselves, are suffering. They do it because the priests do not know who Christ is. But if you who know who he is will put him to the test tonight, you will influence the world and bring about a new Christology, a new thinking about the human imagination; for the human imagination is Christ and there never was or never will be another.

In the 14th chapter of John, Imagination is speaking, saying: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled; you believe in God believe also in me.’ I say the habit of worry discloses the lack of faith in the sovereignty of God. You believe in God? Believe also in imagination! If you worry you don’t believe in your imagination, for worry is your confession of your lack of faith in the sovereignty of God. Now imagination continues, saying: ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions, were it not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also.’

Right after the Second World War, I went to Barbados with my wife and daughter after purchasing only a one-way ticket there. Four months later I decided to arrange for my return passage, as I was scheduled to lecture on the first day of May. At that time there were only two ships servicing the dozens of islands, and, although my brother had tremendous power in the islands, he could not do anything toward getting us passage back to the United States. Hundreds of people were waiting on the list and I was informed that I could not get passage until the end of September. When I heard this I said to myself: ‘All right, I’ll get out.’

That afternoon I went to my hotel room, and sitting in an easy chair I allowed it to become a little boat. (You see, in those days there was no deep water harbor and little boats took us to ships which were anchored in the bay a mile or so away.) Assuming my chair was a boat taking me to the harbor, I felt the rhythm of the water, and when we were latched onto the big ship I allowed my brother Victor to carry my little daughter onto the ship. Then I helped my wife and followed her, feeling every step up the gangplank. When I got to the top my mind wandered, so I brought it back to the base of the steps and repeated the action. Each time my mind wandered I brought it back again until I reached the top, turned, and holding the side of the ship I looked back nostalgically at the island of Barbados, for now we were sailing. In a matter of moments the phone rang and the agent told me that because of a cancellation they had just received from America my passage was available, and I could leave the end of April, the date I had just envisioned. On that day my brother carried my daughter up the gangplank, my sister-in-law followed, then my wife, and finally myself. They acted, but the source of their action was my imaginary act!

Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ is the source of all phenomena. That by him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made. If Jesus Christ makes everything, and I know what I did, is he not my wonderful human imagination? He is described in Corinthians as the power of God and the wisdom of God, and isn’t that imagination? I didn’t pray to anyone. I simply sat in a chair and enacted a scene that, if true, would imply I am sailing. As I allowed the scene to take on the tones of reality by giving it all of the sense of vividness of naturalness, the phone rang, and I had confirmation of my trip to New York. So where is the creative power of the universe if not within man?

Paul tells us: ‘He loved you and gave himself for you.’ Loving you, Imagination gave himself to you by becoming you that you may become Imagination, who is Christ. There never was another Christ and never will be another. Put your imagination to the test and see if it is Christ. If it is, do you need anyone to support you? Do you need any anti-poverty campaign? If those on relief could only believe in Christ, what a change they could make in their life! Instead, they go to church and give it a portion of what is given to them through relief. They support emotionalism because they do not know that source of the phenomena of life. Those on relief think their income is coming from Uncle Sam, not knowing he does not exist. No government has any money! The money it has is first taken from you before it can be given to another. In this world the money we earn is taken from us to give to the Mr. Seeons of the world, and if it is stopped, the so-called government will be criticized for stopping the gift. The churches haven’t failed, except in not telling the true story of Christ. Rather than giving to the poor, they should tell the poor who Christ really is!

If I tell you who Christ is and testing, you find him as your human imagination, does it matter what the world thinks? If there is evidence for a thing, does it matter what anyone thinks? If this can be proved in performance, what does it matter what the world thinks? You do not need to ask any minister, rabbi, or priest what he thinks, if you can test your imagination and prove its creative power!

So, in the Father’s house are many states of consciousness. Pick a state, enter and occupy it. Your Father is the good shepherd and your desires are his sheep. When the good shepherd comes, he gathers all of your desires for yourself and others together and brings them into the field. How is this done? In your imagination! A friend’s desire may not be your desire for him, but if it is not in conflict with your ethical code and you are a good shepherd, you will represent your friend to yourself as telling you that he (or she) has it. That way your sheep, having heard your voice, will follow you into the fold.

In the 10th chapter of John we are told that the good shepherd goes first and his sheep follow. Signs follow, they do not precede. Take your desire into the fold by putting yourself into the desired state. Remain there until you feel its reality. Knowing that imagining creates reality, thank your Father and drop it. Now, do nothing on the outside to make it so, only know your desire is yours the moment you do it! Do not expect immediate birth! There are always intervals of time between pregnancy and its fulfillment. One seed may take 21 days, another five months, nine months, a year, or even more. Do not be concerned with the interval of time between the fertilization of the seed and its hatching; only know the seed of desire has been planted in the mind. And if at times you find your sheep have gone astray, bring them back into your fold when you know who the good shepherd is. But if you don’t, you will find many shepherds who will fleece you!

So I say: the greatest need today is not for a different church, but for a new Christology, a new thinking of the human imagination! There was never another Christ and there never will be another, no matter what the world teaches. ‘I go, to prepare a place for you.’ Taking all of your requests, imagination’s power goes and prepares a place for you to receive them. Going to the state of health, imagination prepares a place of health for one, of wealth for another, fame for another. You might not want to be famous, but if fame is their desire go and prepare a place of fame for them. They may not know that fame is simply a sketch in the sands of time. They may think their face can be engraved in granite and it will remain forever, but it is all an illusion. Their name can be forgotten as quickly as the next generation, but they want fame now and you – being the good shepherd – give it to them. Knowing the source of the phenomena of life you will realize nothing really matters. If you know how a thing is made and it is taken from you, you can remake it again. So you see: knowledge is far more important than that which knowledge has made, but man is lost in that which is made and has forgotten the maker.

Everyone should be completely consumed with the desire to know how a thing is made. I’ll tell you how I make it. Knowing what I want, reason may tell me I can’t get it and my senses may deny that I have it; but believing that my own wonderful human imagination is Christ and trusting myself, I assume I have it and drop it right there. I do not concern myself with what means will be employed for me to get it, I simply believe I already have it!

I believe that my own wonderful human imagination is Jesus Christ and all things are possible to him, even the recording of something that I have struggled all day to remember and cannot. Like Blake I turn to my human imagination, my divine body, for I know thee O Lord, when thou ariseth upon my eyes, even in this dungeon. So when I awake in the morning and imagination returns to make me alive, I trust it implicitly. Perhaps I can’t remember something, but would like to, so I say: ‘Thank you Father, you always hear me.’ Then as I walk the earth memory appears out of the nowhere. Perhaps it is a poem, a saying, or an article I have misplaced; but when I turn to Him and in thankfulness request its memory, my Heavenly Father always gives it to me. This I know from experience.

You turn to yourself, and yet you address him as though he were another, because imagination is another until this garment is taken off for the last time. Clothed in this garment of flesh you are limited, but when you take it off for the last time, you and He are one. Night after night Christ withdraws, as it were, and returning, he ariseth upon your weary eyes and you can see. If your human imagination did not return you would have no knowledge of this world. So learn to trust Him implicitly, for He will not fail you. You can attain any goal if you believe that your own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine something, accept it in gratitude and watch it come to pass.

May I tell you: you have always been doing it, but your memory is so short you do not recognize your own harvest. If your memory awoke you would see that everything happens because you at one time imagined it, (mostly in fear) and then dropped it. You planted the seeds of the tares and the wheat, the events and circumstances of your world, but have forgotten the planting. So I tell you: you are as free as you want to be if you will believe in Christ. He is not on the outside but in you, as your own wonderful human imagination!

Now let me repeat a thought I said earlier. The habit of worry confesses ones lack of faith in the sovereignty of God. If you worry, you don’t believe in Christ! He said: ‘Let not your heart be troubled (worried), you believe in God, believe also in me.’ If you really believe this you will not worry, but will believe that He and He alone has ways no one knows of bringing to pass that which you have imagined.

There is no limit placed upon your human imagination save that which you place upon yourself. Your financial, social and intellectual pictures are as limited as you make them. All within you, you and you alone have the ability to enlarge your concept of causality, plant and reap your every desire. Desires are the sheep of your pasture and the shepherd is your own wonderful human imagination. If your desires have gone astray bring them back into the fold where they really belong.

When you go home tonight read the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John. It’s such a glorious chapter. The whole Bible is, really. Just to read every verse so thrills me it becomes alive to me. In this chapter, when they asked him to show them the Father, he said: ‘I have been with you all these years and yet you do not know the Father? When you see me you have seen the Father, how then can you say, ‘Show me the Father?” Then he tells us: ‘I dwell in you and you dwell in me, we are one and I am the Father.’ Man can’t quite see it and you can’t blame him for that. So I still say: the greatest need is for a new thinking of the human imagination. If man sees his own imagination as Christ, then all the so-called problems of the world will dissolve, leaving only harmony. There will be no barriers when one sees his own imagination as Christ.

If tonight you believe your imagination is Christ and you desire to be elsewhere, sleep there in your imagination just as though it were true. Forget the fact that you can’t afford it or do not have the time. ‘I am’ infinity, and all thine are mine and mine are thine. If you really believe in Christ as your own wonderful human imagination, then sleep as the person you want to be. Don’t ask me how it is going to come about, for my ways and means are past finding out!

A man called me three weeks ago, saying: ‘Many years ago in New York City you told me that if I wanted to go to California all I had to do was assume I was there. Well, my wife and I are here now, but I want you to know that I’m not sold on what you teach. I did what you said, but the reason I came here is because the company I worked for opened a factory and transferred me here.’ He didn’t find himself flying through space, but was transferred by his company, so he doesn’t believe that feeling is the secret! Well, you take your pearls and throw them before the swine of the world and they pick your wisdom up and drop it down, but you throw it just the same. I know you are warned not to do it, but I have never been able to discriminate as to who will take it and who will not, so I tell it to all who will listen.

When our late President Hoover addressed the GOP convention in San Francisco, he said: ‘The rise and fall of nations could be traced to the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mine of man.’ Here is a man who rose from the very bottom. He had no money, put himself through college, yet left millions to his family and various charities. Time will prove that Mr. Hoover was a truly great man. He didn’t cause the depression but tells us that it can be traced to the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of man. He sent me an autographed copy of his address and asked for a copy of my book, Awakened Imagination, which I am quite sure he had in his library at his death. His was a truly great mind, one that saw how things worked.

Men that you and I admire, if they were honest, would admit to implanting in our mind that which would belittle us and ennoble them. Many know what they are doing but they don’t know Christ. If they did, they would know they do not have to belittle us to ennoble themselves. If you want to rise, you don’t have to put another down in order to feel you have risen. Your reality is I AM. Raise your consciousness and you raise yourself, but you haven’t risen when you feel the need to push another down by claiming ‘I AM better than.’

Tonight take this law and apply it. I promise you it will not fail. When you go to bed dwell in your own wonderful human imagination and say: ‘Thank you, Father’ as though you were addressing another. You know you are thanking your human imagination, but while assuming you have what you want, thank your Father. You came out from the Father and came into the world. Now you are leaving the world and going to the Father. Eventually you will reach him, and when you do he is yourself. There is no other Father. There is no other God!

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—09/22/1969

To think of the Bible’s events as historical, and the characters recorded there as persons such as you and I, is to see truth tempered to the weakness of the human form, unable to stand the strong light of revelation. But I tell you: it is in us, as persons, that the nature of God is revealed. 

Paul tells us his conversion came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. It did not come through a man, thereby causing him to change religions. No. Paul never forsook Judaism, but interpreted the meaning of the Old Testament through revelation. But was Paul a person, an individual being such as you are, as I am; or is he, too, one of these eternal characters? That is the question I am asking tonight. 

I tell you: all of the characters of scripture, including Paul, are eternal states. One day, whether you be male or female, you will reach the state of Paul, and your journey in the world of death will come to its end. 

A friend of mine – a lady with two children and expecting her third – wrote, saying: “In vision I saw the Bible opened to the New Testament and heard the words: `You are Paul.’ I was so startled I broke the vision and awoke questioning the words, `I am Paul? I am Paul? I am Paul?’ The idea seemed too much for me to grasp, so I returned to sleep and the dream continued. I saw the entire New Testament opened at the Book of Matthew, then an invisible hand moved the pages through the Book of Revelation as I heard the words: `It’s all about Paul,’ So I ask you: Who is Paul?” 

Paul is a state you enter when, having been introduced to Christianity or Judaism, the secret behind the words is revealed. In the state of Paul, you discover you are the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Father. It is Paul who says: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” When the vision is yours, to whom could you turn to ask what they thought of it? They would tell you that you were insane, so you would turn to no man; rather you would abide in the vision and dwell upon it. 

Paul’s conversion did not change his religion, for he never forsook Judaism. His one disappointment was that he could not convince his fellow religionists of the truth of what had taken place in him. Paul represents every individual – be he male or female – who arrives at that point in time when he awakens to discover that the characters of scripture did not exist in time and space, but are eternal spiritual states, which the individual moves through toward the climax, which is Jesus Christ. 

The fundamental story of scripture is a metamorphosis – a complete change of form. Like the grub worm is transformed into the butterfly, so man – as we understand him – is turned into Jesus Christ. And when it happens in you, there is no one to whom you can turn. It is a fact you cannot deny. I could no more deny my experiences of Christ unfolding within me, than I can deny the fact that I am standing before you now. And I am not unique. Christ will unfold in every child born of woman. He must, for God cannot and will not fail to fulfill his promise in all. 

The word “Saul” means “to inquire; to ask.” Entering the state of Saul, you are questioning life – its purpose and plan. Is there a God? Why am I here? Saul’s is a questing mind, one which is seeking an answer to the phenomena of life. 

Today is the wonderful Day of Atonement which came to its end at sundown with the singing of a great psalm in every synagogue which begins, “Awake O Sleeper who forgot eternity in the pursuit of the moment.” Having forgotten that we are all one in eternity, we are called upon to awaken, but awaken from what? From the pursuit of the moment. Then, in the eternal state called Paul, the story of Jesus will unfold in you, and you, too, will say: “From now on I regard no one from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” 

Like every Jew, Paul was looking for an external messiah, one who would come to be the anointed king and save Israel from the enemy. Then he discovered the messiah was within him and would never appear on the outside. Paul’s thirteen letters were written twenty years before the Book of Mark, which was the first gospel; so Paul could not have quoted the New Testament, only the Old. 

He never converted in the sense of converting from Judaism to Christianity, or Catholicism to Protestantism. After the revelation, Paul understood that which was revealed to the prophets; for he discovered that the messiah which was to come, was himself, saying: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” 

There is a poem by Browning called “Saul,” in which David tells of the coming of the messiah, saying: 

“O Saul, it shall be a face like my face
That shall receive thee. A man like unto me thou shalt love,
And be loved by, forever. A hand like this hand shall open the door
To a new life for thee. See the Christ stand.” 

Standing before the demented king, David is telling Saul that when he sees Christ, he will wear the face of David. That he will love and be loved by him forever. Extending his hand, David tells Saul that this knowledge will open the gate to a new life; for David is the only Christ Saul will ever see. 

When Christ stands before you, he will wear the face of David and reveal you as the Lord God Jehovah. Then you will say: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” This will be the experience of every child born of woman; for awareness – although limited by a garment of flesh and blood, restricted and weak – is God, the father of all life, and there is no other God. 

Now, when Paul spoke of sin he wasn’t speaking of a little misdemeanor, or even a big one. To Paul, if you are not radiating the glory of God and are not now the express image of his person, you are sinning and falling short of that glory. Only when you enter into the state called Paul, will you radiate God’s glory and express his image; for it is in that state that David reveals you to yourself. 

Paul confessed to the Galatians that God sent his son into his heart crying “Father!” And now I tell you that when David stood before me and called me father, I saw him more vividly then I have ever seen anyone here. I can still see his heavenly beauty. I saw David in the year 1959, yet history claims he lived in 1000 B.C. But David is not my flesh and blood son; he is part of the unfolding picture of an eternal story in which man is involved. The story, as recorded in the Old Testament, was not understood until it unfolded within one who said: “I am a child of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.” Paul never forsook Judaism, but tried to interpret it to those who would listen, but they could not understand. They were – as they still are today – looking for a physical, external messiah to destroy their enemies and establish his kingdom in this world; but that is not the story. 

This eternal truth is housed in every being who walks the earth. One day you will find Christ as your very being. You who say “I am” before you state your name, will experience all of the eternal, spiritual states spoken of and named in scripture, to arrive at the final state called Paul. 

My friend knows she is Paul, for she heard the depth of her soul tell her so. To her the idea seemed incredulous; yet I tell her she heard correctly, for she has been called. She has been chosen and elected to be an incurrent eyewitness to the great truth which will unfold within her. 

The Paul of the Bible is a state everyone will attain. And while in that state, David will reveal your true identity. Enter any state and you become that state. While in the state of wealth, everything you touch turns to gold. In the state of success, you could turn a failing business into a successful one, for in the state of success you cannot fail. 

You are not a success or a failure, but the occupant of a state. Although you remain untouched by any state, when you enter one, you express it. Put yourself into the state of health, and you must express health. Enter the state of fame, and no power can stop you from expressing it. 

And when you enter the state of Paul, David will stand before you and say: “A face like my face shall receive you. A man like unto me thou shalt love and be loved by forever. A hand like this hand shall open the gate of a new life for you. See the Christ stand.” 

You will be looking into the face of David, the Lord’s anointed; and when he calls you father, you know who you are, for “No one knows who the Father is except the son, and no one knows who the son is except the Father.” David, your son, sets you free; for he is the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, whose revealed name is I AM. Everyone who says, “I am,” is the Father of that eternal youth called David. Awake, O sleeper, and remember eternity, the son of Jesse, for only he can reveal you as God the Father. 

This is the greatest story ever told. It is an incredible story of a transformation, a metamorphosis. “Meta” means “change” and “morphos” means “form,” so metamorphosis means a radical change of form. This is true, for the being you are destined to be, could not function in a body of flesh and blood. 

You will move into an entirely new age. It is a new world, and in it you need a new form. The form is spirit, yet you have a human face, a human voice, and human hands. That is the form I saw when I stood in the presence of the Risen Lord and answered his question: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” in the words of Paul, as “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” 

At that moment he embraced me and I assumed his incredible form. Since that time we have not been separated or divorced, although while I wear the body of flesh and blood I must be subject to all of its weaknesses and limitations. But when I take it off this time, I will be one with that one body, who is gathering all. 

Everyone will be saved, because everyone is God and God is saving himself. At the present time you do not know you are God; but you will know it when you enter the state called Paul, for in that state the revelations unfold and you, too, will say: “I did not get it from a man. It came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. He unveiled himself in me as my very being. Now I know there is no other.” 

So I say to my friend: your revelation is true. You have been called and elected. You have been chosen – not by men, but by God, which is the definition of a saint in scripture. How could any man make another man a saint? The idea is stupid. When you are called, you are sainted. When you are elected, you are sainted. When you are chosen, you are sainted, and no man, looking at you, could ever see you as a saint. You are still capable of losing your temper and being violent. That means nothing. Be everything that you are, for you are already redeemed by reason of your experiences. 

So, the characters of scripture are not historical. To see anyone – including Jesus Christ – as a person who walked this earth, is to see truth tempered to the weakness of your soul, and unable to bear the strong light of revelation. Jesus Christ is the perfect state into which you are all moving. And in that state, scripture unfolds to reveal you as God. And who is he? He is your own wonderful human imagination! 

If all things are possible to your imagination, then all things are possible to imagine! How would you act if God imagined you as you want to be? How would you feel? What would you do? Then do it. Feeling its reality, have faith in your imaginal act. Desire is your hope. Your imaginal act is your subjective appropriation of the hope you want to objectify. Now, faith is the link between God’s power and your desire. He doesn’t question your desire. He who is all creative power and know-how, simply gives it to you. That is Christ, he who is defined as the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

Now, if you test God and prove to yourself that imagination does create reality, tell others. If they try it and it works for them, does it really matter what the world thinks? If they think the idea is insane, it won’t be the first time. They thought Einstein was insane. There are those who think I am. That’s perfectly all right, for the day will come when God will reveal himself in each individual, and then that one will move from the state of Saul to Paul. 

There is no other God, for God became Man by assuming all of his human weaknesses and limitations. God is not pretending he is you. When he became your breath, he had to take your unique qualities upon himself. That was his crucifixion. No man was nailed upon a cross bar; your body is the cross Christ wears. He is buried in you and will rise in you. His tomb is the human skull where he lays dreaming. So awake, you sleeper, who forgot eternity in the pursuit of the moment. Although this moment seems so real, you are its reality and the central being of scripture. 

The fundamental purpose of scripture is metamorphosis – the radical transformation of Man into God. And God has a son, formed by his experiences as the human imagination and personified as David of Biblical fame. David is he who is “A man after my own heart who will do all my will.” He is not a historical character, but an eternal state which appears at the end of your journey into the world of death. 

The world may think they have found David’s tomb; but they will never find any historical evidence concerning these characters of scripture, because they are all spiritual states personified. You will pass through these states to discover – through revelation – that you are the author of the Bible. Just imagine, Paul’s letters came first. He called them “My gospel.” They are Paul’s good news of salvation which came through revelation. Paul’s thirteen letters were written first, and all the other books were based upon them; but who is Paul? Everyone who enters the state of fulfillment. 

One day you will enter the state known as Paul; but right now you are Saul, seeking the cause of life, not knowing it is your very self. In the Books of Samuel and Kings, we are told that Saul tried to kill the very one who could reveal him to himself; but the revelation could not come until his name was changed to Paul. Even though, today you are very much a lady, you will eventually become the Paul of scripture. But in that realm, you are above the organization of sex, as Paul tells us: “In Christ there is no bond, no free, no male, no female, no Jew, no Greek, for all are one in Christ.” Your true identity is not male or female, but Man, and Man is God and God is Man, as Blake so beautifully put it: “Thou art a Man, God is no more, thine own Humanity learn to adore.” 

Tonight, set your hope fully upon this grace that is coming to you; for Christ in you is your hope of glory! Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourself and see, for all things are possible to him. Think of something you would like that reason says you cannot have. Now, assume it’s yours. 

Your assumption, though false in the sense that it is denied by your reasonable mind, if persisted in will harden into fact. You do not need to know the means that will be employed to bring your assumption to pass; all you are required to do is persist in your assumption and allow your own wonderful human imagination to give it to you. 

All things are possible to your imagination. It’s up to you to provide the necessary link between your assumption and its fulfillment. That link is faith. Having assumed your desire is fulfilled, your faith in that assumption will cause it to harden into fact. That is the law. 

Test this law, and if you prove it in performance, it will not matter to you if it seems irrational to others. Tonight, leave this auditorium in the assumption that you are what you would like to be; and if tomorrow your assumption can be seen as fact by the world round about you, then you have found Christ, he who is within you as your hope of glory. 

Man is forever coming up with fantastic ideas like going to the moon. At the time, the idea seemed impossible, yet in time man does go to the moon. So you see, nothing is impossible to God – but nothing! 

Simply name that which seems so impossible to you, then assume that you have it. Walk in the assumption it is now an objective fact and see how God works. I tell you, in a way that you do not know, and you could not possibly devise, you will be led across a bridge of incident to the fulfillment of that state. All you have to do is ignore the evidence of your outer senses and go about your own wonderful business assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Your assumption, instead of receding into the past, will advance into the future and you will walk right into its fulfillment. 

Accept what I am telling you tonight, and you will be on your way towards the state called Paul. He tried his best to persuade his own friends to believe what happened to him in the synagogue. Christianity is not a new religion, but the fulfillment of Judaism. It’s as old as the faith of Abraham, older even than the synagogue. The promise was fulfilled in the state of Judaism, interpreted to Jews, who then organized it into a separate religion; but there could be no Christianity without Judaism. Many a Christian would like to divorce the two books and put the Old Testament aside; but there could be no New Testament without the Old, for the New is only the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. 

You are destined to be told – as the lady was – that you are Paul; and the chances are you will be just as shocked as she is, when she looks into the mirror and sees a mother and a mother-to-be, and a wife who may argue with her husband and be short of money once in a while. These weaknesses are part of your garment of flesh and blood; but at the end of time, your new body of love – woven without seams – will be ready for occupancy. Then you will take off this body of limitation and opacity and assume your new body of life. 

If, however, you have not reached the state of Paul, when you leave this body, you will find yourself in another one just like this one, in a section of time best suited for the work yet to be done in you. Don’t think you are going to move chronologically from one year to the next, for it can be any year, be it the year 1000, or 3000. 

Whatever year you find yourself in, you will feel perfectly normal there, and things will seem quite natural. These bodies of death belong to this age; and regardless of what year you find yourself in, you will wear the same body of slavery, where you must perform all of its functions. No matter how powerful you may be, you cannot command anyone to perform your body’s functions for you; therefore you are its slave while you remain in the state of Saul. Only when you move into the state of Paul, can the drama unfold and set you free. 

Don’t think that you have to be the perfect specimen of a man, judged by human standards, to arrive in state of Paul. Although weak and limited as you are now, strive to know the truth of scripture; and one day, when you least expect it, you will find yourself cast in the central role, as everything said of Jesus Christ will unfold within you, and you will know who you are. 

If there is any Christ other than he who is in us, who rose and continues to rise in the individual, he is false; for the true Christ is within you. The universal, cosmic Christ became humanity. He rose and continues to rise in individuals. One day he will rise within you to reveal you as God the Father. The relationship of Father/Son was established before that the world was – only we forgot. This is simply the return of the memory of God, all within the individual. 

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—12/12/1969

The words of one in whom the great mystery of life unfolded, are enigmatic. And the evangelist who wrote the gospels, kept that great mystery as it was told. In the 17th chapter of the Book of John, he is speaking to God the Father, the depth of himself, saying: “Now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to thee. Holy Father, keep in thy name that which thou hast given to me that they may be one, even as we are one.” (The only name that can bind us together and make us one is Father. When you and I discover that we really are the Father, we will understand the mystery of life.) Now he makes this statement: “I have guarded them and none is lost but the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled.” 

Bear in mind, this is not secular history, but salvation history; so who is this son of perdition that is lost? Scholars claim it is one called Judas, but that is not true. If you want to get close to the answer, read the 18th Psalm, which is repeated in the 22nd chapter of 2 Samuel. This is a hymn David sings, praising the Lord for saving him from death and destruction. And the word “perdition” means “death and destruction.” 

Let me take these enigmatic words and show you what they really mean. The son of perdition is one who hears, but refuses to accept, the Christian revelation. The 2nd chapter of 2 Thessalonians tells us that: “The lawless one, the son of perdition, will be revealed and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming.” 

I tell you salvation’s story as I have experienced it. You may deny my words, or agree with them. Those who deny me are the anti-Christ, the son of perdition. They themselves will not be destroyed, for the mystery of Christ will unfold in them. 

Rather, the state of consciousness in which they dwell, will be lost, to them “for none have I lost but the son of perdition.” No individual will, or can be, destroyed, for he is a son of God. He can fall into the state known as the son of perdition, and while in it, completely deny this incredible story is true. But when it awakens in him and becomes true, then he has nowhere to go but to admit the experience. 

If I tell you the incredible story and you think it is silly, I am not concerned, but confident it is going to happen in you; and when it does, what you thought before does not matter. 

And so it is with others that come after you: When they are confronted with the experience, their thoughts and beliefs change. Everyone will be saved, and the only thing that is lost is the state of consciousness in which the individual lived when he heard salvation’s story and could not accept it. 

The son of perdition has nothing to do with any Judas, for he is the one who betrays the messianic secret. No one could ever betray you but yourself, for no one knows your secret but yourself! Judas is Judah, the Lion’s whelp. He is the only son named in the genealogy of Jesus. “Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.” Judah is the one who knows and tells the secret. 

The son of perdition is not an individual man who can be destroyed, because every child born of woman is a son of God; and it takes all of his Sons to form God, as told us in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “He has put bounds to the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” And every child born here is an emanation of a son of God. 

The word “Elohim,” translated “God,” is a plural word. We are told that “In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth, saying: `Let us make man in our image.” Then the gods (Elohim) came down and buried themselves in humanity, and not one son can be lost, only the son of perdition, the state of consciousness which rejects and denies the Christian revelation. 

You may question how a man can be consumed in the fire, turn to dust, and yet survive; but I tell you: all things are restored to life by the seed of contemplative thought, even the little discarded flower. That is restoration; but I am speaking of resurrection where the son is resurrected, not the body of flesh and blood he wears here. He who occupies a body that is always restored, is a son of God going through the world of death. And when his journey is over, he awakens from his great dream of death by the signs of life that follow. 

Now, calling himself the son of man, Jesus speaks of himself in the future, saying: “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus is always coming, always awakening, in man. The great mystery called Christmas is the beginning of the signs of faith of which many will reject, as told us in the 2nd chapter of Luke. When Simeon took the little child in his arms he called it a sign for the fall and rising of many in Israel saying, “Thoughts out of many hearts will be revealed.” This is true, for I have told the story and some have accepted it while others have disbelieved. 

But even those who deny it now will one day pull themselves out of the state of perdition by finding Jesus rise in them as their very being. Then, by the breath of his mouth (the word of God), perdition will be slain by the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, for the Word cannot return void. It must accomplish that for which it was sent. The gospel is the Word of God which actually became you that you may become the Word. Sending himself into the world as sons, God raises himself back to the awareness of being the Father. 

Now he tells us, “When you see me you have seen the Father.” How can this be? When you see me you know me to be yourself. You will never see the Father outside of yourself. If anyone should come saying, “Lord, there he is, or here he is,” do not believe him for you will never find God outside of yourself. He will rise in you and you will know him only when his only begotten son, David, stands before you and calls you Father. Then and only then can you say, “I have found David, the son of Jesse (I AM), a man after my own heart who will do all my will.” 

In the state of consciousness called the son of perdition you cannot believe my incredible story. But the state will be destroyed by the breath of his mouth, as his Word unfolds in you. Although you denied it prior to the eruption of the Word in you, after you experience all that is said of Jesus Christ, you know you are he, and you cannot deny it. So the son of perdition is the only one that is slain, the only one that is lost. It’s part of the play. 

Everyone called by any name is saved, because it has already happened and will continue to happen; for I am in them and they are in me. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou has given me. That name is Father. I have kept them in the name thou gavest me by telling them that they are the Father, and they are moving towards the discovery of it. Although some did not believe me, I have guarded them and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture (which is thy Word) might be fulfilled. I told them thy Word as I experienced it. I interpreted thy Word to them, and Father – they heard it. Some rejected it and some believed it. In spite of those who rejected it, may I say: they cannot die, for they are my brothers as we came down into this fragmented state together. 

In this morning’s Los Angeles Times Book Review section, several of Robert Grave’s poems were printed. As I read them this one little verse stood out and my heart jumped within me. These are the words, if I recall them correctly: 

“Hold fast with both hands 
To that Royal love which alone
As we know certainly,
Restores fragmentation into true unity.” 

What a revelation! The great poets are the ones who see so clearly. And those who have the capacity to use words, as Robert Graves has, say it so beautifully. 

In the world the One is fragmented into the many. Regardless of the pigment of your skin, your race, your nation or belief, the world is the fragmented Rock that I saw back in 1934. During that time I was a dancer. The country was in the deep depression, and people could not afford to pay to be entertained by a dancer. 

I lived in a basement apartment on 75th Street in New York City, not knowing where the next dollar was coming from. I did not despair, however, but sat in the silence and quietly closed my eyes. I was not thinking of anything in particular, just resting with my eyes shut, watching the golden clouds which always come, as all the dark convolutions of the brain grow luminous. As I contemplated this golden, liquid light, a quartz approximately 20″ in diameter suddenly appeared, then fragmented itself into numberless parts. As I watched, they gathered themselves together into a human form seated in the lotus posture. Startled, I realized that I was looking at myself – but a self containing such majesty of face and beauty of features, that I could never have believed possible. There was nothing I could have added to that perfection to improve it. 

I was looking at myself in deep meditation, not as a piece of clay, but a living statue. Then it began to glow and increased in luminosity until it reached the intensity of the sun and exploded; and I awoke to find myself still seated in my chair in my little basement apartment in New York City. Turning to scripture, I read the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “Of the Rock that begot you, you are unmindful and of the God who gave you birth you are unaware.” 

Then in the 10th of 1 Corinthians, I read: “They drank from the spiritual Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” Now I know that within all is Christ, the Rock that never fails. 

Back in 1929, the market broke, and 17 million men were unemployed. At that time we only had a population of maybe 130 million, whereas today we number 204 million. Our bins were filled, but people could not pay the tax or get the money to distribute the food. 

By 1934 I had already gone through five years of the depression, so I wasn’t worrying about my next meal, or my next job for that matter. I was just resting, for by this time depression was a state of mind. So, as I daily did, I sat in my chair and turned my attention inward, into my brain, and contemplated within. 

Then, as always, the clouds began to appear, grow luminous, and move in lovely, billowy, golden liquid light. Then came the rock. The perfect imagery of scripture. And the Rock was Christ. He formed himself into me, but me as a perfect being. 

Everyone is destined to have these experiences. They are enigmatic but – luckily for us –those who recorded the story in the gospels kept the mystery in the words, and did not try to explain them in detail. Many will deny it, but they are not lost because of their denial, for nothing is lost but the son of perdition – the belief in destruction and death. 

Everyone, seeing their friends depart this world have to admit to themselves that things do die. We came down into a world where everything dies; yet I tell you: nothing really dies, but returns by the seed of contemplative thought. But that is not the mystery of Christmas. 

I tell you: God himself is housed in that which appears to die. He is dreaming this dream of death which we call life. One day he will awaken through a definite series of events, beginning with his resurrection. Blake claims the sleep of death is 6,000 years. I do not know how long my dream was, but I do know that when I awoke it seemed as though I had been there for an eternity. 

My skull was completely sealed, but I had an innate knowledge as to what to do. I pushed the base of my skull and something gave, leaving a hole which I squeezed myself through and came out of that skull, just like a child comes out of its mother’s womb. 

Then the imagery of scripture, as told in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Luke, surrounded me. I held the sign – the little child wrapped in swaddling clothes – in my arms and saw the three witnesses to the event, those who were told to “Go quickly into Bethlehem where you will find a sign that a Savior was born this day.” 

God is the savior of the world as told us in the 43rd and 45th chapters of the Book of Isaiah. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior.” The savior’s name is I am. 

It is God who awoke when I awoke in my skull. In the Book of Psalms, God is told to “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou, O Lord.” It is God who sleeps and dreams the dream of life, animating the world of death until he awakes within the skull of man where he first entered. His departure from that tomb is the birth we now celebrate on the 25th day of December. 

This is followed by the great revelation of remembrance, for on that day God’s son David reveals your fatherhood. After this revelation you will understand the words of Robert Grave’s poem which I have quoted, because only then will you know true unity. If I am the father of your son, and one you know other than the speaker is the father of our son, are we not one father? So in the end there is only one body, one Lord, one Spirit, one God and Father of all. 

One body fell. Its fragmentation is humanity. We are all sons of God being collected and brought back into the true unity as God the Father. Having played all the parts – the good, the bad and the indifferent – your son reveals your fatherhood. When these signs confront you, your journey is at its end. 

Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of his sons. God brings all the sons back by giving them himself; and it takes all the sons to form God, so in the end there is only God the Father. 

It takes one who has experienced scripture to explain it. Who would have believed the third chapter of John could be literally true? Calling himself the son of man he said: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.” 

I know this truth from experience for I – a son of man – was lifted up in spiral form, just like a fiery serpent, right into the kingdom of heaven – which is within, as told us in the Book of Luke. As the temple of the Living God, my body split from top to bottom, and I – the son of man – rose into that heavenly state like a serpent, as it reverberated like thunder. 

And who would have thought that when the Holy Spirit descends, it is in the bodily form of a dove, but it is. The Holy Spirit so loves you because you have finished the work that you, yourself, set out to do, that he penetrates the ring of offense to demonstrate his love. 

We, a brotherhood of one, agreed to dream in concert before we descended and became fragmented. In this world we are seemingly separate brings, at war with one another, and yet there is no other because eventually we will be the Father of God’s only son. So, 

“Hold fast with both hands 
To that Royal Love which alone
As we know certainly, 
Restores fragmentation into true unity.” 

Here is one who stands before you and speaks of being here, yet tells you that he is to come. Then he asks the question: “Will he find faith upon the earth?’ So he is always coming, always awakening, and one in whom he awakens turns to his immediate circle and wonders if anyone will believe him. 

In the story, Jesus is a wine bibber, a glutton, a man of the world who loves harlots and tax collectors and all the sinners. He has awakened in me, and because I, too, like a good dinner, a good bottle of wine, and a few good martinis, my testimony is dismissed; and I am considered an impostor, because this is not a popular concept of what Jesus ought to be. 

But I say to you, if anyone tells you: “Come, I have found him,” do not go, because God cannot be found any place but within you. He is buried in you, will awaken in you, and rise in you, as you. 

“It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.” Have you seen his face? It is just like yours, but raised to the nth degree of perfection. He is the Rock, and the Rock is Christ. We have forgotten the Rock that begot us, and are unmindful of the Rock that gave us birth. 

That Rock was fragmented, and you forgot that the world round about you was nothing more than yourself pushed out. So you have fought shadows, believing in the seeming other, when housed within that seeming other is the only God, and you are he. The same series of events will awaken in him as they will in you, and in the end we will all know each other. 

Even though I know I am God the Father, and you know that you are God the Father, there is no loss of identity. And for all the identity of person, there is this strange, peculiar discontinuity of earthly form. You will wear your earthly face, raised to the nth degree of perfection. You will have a human voice and hands, but your body is indescribable. It is wisdom and above all things, it is Love. 

Everyone in the universe will experience the mystery we are now about to celebrate, called Christmas. This is not some little day that took place once and for all 2,000 years ago. It is always taking place, for it is the coming of God, awakening within man. Were he not in you, you could not breathe. So he slays the son of perdition by the breath of his mouth, and destroys him by his appearing and his coming. 

God the Father is within you, emanating the garment you are wearing. He cleaves to it, and you – in turn – cleave to him, until one day you learn to love only one being, and see that one being reflected in all things. 

Hold to him. His name is I am. He loves his emanation and will cleave to him and they will become one. Then he awakes, wearing that individualized face which is perfect. I will meet you in eternity and I will know you; but for all the identity of person, there will be a discontinuity of form. A form that is glorious beyond the wildest dream of man. The form is all power, all wisdom, and all love. We purposely descended into this world to accomplish that end. 

I hope that when you get together on Christmas day to celebrate with your family and friends, that you will remember what Christmas really means, and know that everyone present will have this experience. 

They, too, will awaken to being God the Father. This I know, and because there is only one Father, he is one with the world. All the brothers will return, and in returning they will be God the Father; for it was God’s pleasure and will to give himself to all of his sons, so when all return, they are God Himself. 

Now let us go into the silence.