Category: Neville Goddard Lecture

Neville Goddard—03/28/1969

The dream of life unfolds on this level, as well as on a higher one. On this level we see things happen and are given reasons for wars and revolutions, as well as the geological causes for the convulsions of nature. But we do not know and cannot perceive their hidden cause, for it lies in the imagination of man. All things spring, not from the ostensible causes to which they are attributed, but from that which is hidden – man’s own wonderful human imagination!

In the April issue of the Atlantic Monthly, there is an article by General David M. Shoop, retired commandant of the Marine Corps. In this article, he claims that there is an ambitious elite of high-ranking officers who are turning this country into a militaristic and aggressive nation. They are promoting war in the belief that through it they will receive the promotions and glory they desire and cannot achieve while serving in a peacetime army. They dream of a war they can command in glory. Where? In their own wonderful human imagination, the hidden cause of all life! Imagination can be used infernally – as these men are doing – or towards the kingdom of heaven. This is done by thinking of a friend and hearing him tell you his good news. You can watch his facial expression change as he speaks to you. You can see him stand erect, wearing clothes he is proud of, as you feel the thrill of his change. And if you will believe that what you are now seeing is real, you can relax in the knowledge that one day your friend will conform to what have you done in your imagination!

Do you know that you can take that same individual and hear him tell you sad news? You can see him dirty and ashamed, and he will conform to that image which you have created in your imagination? Your creative power, which is Christ, can be used infernally or in a heavenly way. Its use is entirely up to you. General Shoop claimed that our involvement in Vietnam was a direct result of the ambition of an elite group of high-ranking officers who prefer war to peace, in order to receive glory and prestige in their chosen field! You and I are now burdened with the enormous task of continuing their effort, which began in the imagination of a small group of men.

The prophets and poets, inspired by the same voice, have told us this throughout the centuries. Yeats said: “I will never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the winepress who started that subtle change in men’s mind. Or the passion, from which so many countries have been put to the sword, did not begin in the mind of some poor shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before he ran upon his way.” Who knows who is treading in the winepress this night? Who knows what a person in solitary confinement is imagining? Is he using this only power in the universe infernally or blissfully? I hope you use your imagination in the state of bliss, for the outside world is alive because of this hidden power within you. I know that a man, imagining intensely can influence millions. He can act through many men and speak with many voices. This little group of men, imagining their promotions, are influencing millions and moving through unnumbered men toward their goal. Those who cover their costumes with medals, like the Stalins and the Hitlers of the world, are displaying their complete misunderstanding of God’s power of imagination.

I ask you to believe me, for I am speaking from a level of one who has awakened from the dream of life. I have experienced scripture and know it is a true story from beginning to end. The gospel tells us of a pattern which repeats itself in everyone, for every child born of woman has within him an ancestral self, a heavenly being who supports him. This is the one who said: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” A child is alive because a son of God – who is the emanation of that ancestral self – is in it. We are told that bounds have been set to the peoples of the earth according to the number of the sons of God. You were given the gift of awareness because of the immortal son of the ancestral you who will never forsake you, not in eternity. See how precious you are in the eyes of he who is the power of powers?

Now, do not misuse this power, but use it only in love. Every person you meet, regardless of his pigment of skin, the nation behind him, or the so-called sect he is associated with, is alive because your ancestral being who has no beginning and no end is behind his mask, as he is behind yours. That one is taking him through the necessary experiences to make him one with himself, as the ancestral you is taking you through the necessary experiences to make you one with himself. Eventually you and he will return to that one being who sent you out in the first place. That is your destiny.

Now, in the gospels we are told that the Risen Christ turned to his apostles and said: “There are those standing here who will not taste of death until they see the kingdom of God.” Scholars claim this prophecy failed because they do not know what or where the kingdom of God is. It is not a realm, but a body. And it is not out there, but within. If, as Luke tells us, the kingdom of heaven is within you, who would know you entered it but yourself? And if you told your friends and it was not what they expected, would they believe you? No! They would continue to claim the promise was not fulfilled, yet I say the promises of God will not be broken. There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they enter the kingdom of God.

The kingdom, being within, is entered when the curtain is split. Only then can you see the blood of your ancestral being who died to become as you are. Recognition causes you to fuse with it, and rising like a fiery serpent, you enter that holy sepulcher where the drama began. Matthew knew that the violent took the holy sepulcher by force. The word translated ‘violent’ here means life; to press oneself into; to find a place within.

Life is in the blood. Contemplating the blood of God Himself, you fuse with it and become life itself. The Father, having life in himself, has granted you his emanation to be life itself. Becoming one with your ancestral being, you are no longer the emanated, but the Godhead through which the emanation occurred. So the statement is true: there are some standing here who will not taste of death before they enter the kingdom of God. But the only ones who will know it are those who experience it. This goes on forever and ever. If you are looking for the kingdom of God on the outside you will look in vain, for the kingdom is within and cannot be entered from without. In his 16th chapter, Matthew claims they will see the Son of man entering his kingdom, but in the 9th chapter of Mark and Luke, it is called the kingdom of God.

Now, after making the statement that some standing here will not taste death before they enter the kingdom of God, Peter, James, and John are taken into a high mountain where his countenance is completely altered before them. You may think this took place on the outside, but it takes place within. The evangelists took this appearance of resurrection and recorded it as Jesus’ external ministry; just as when I tell you what happened in me I speak externally, yet the three people who witnessed my transformation appeared within.

Recently a lady wrote telling of finding herself in a cage, observing three men etched in gold, and a woman holding an infant. This is a perfect adumbration. The three first appeared to Abraham in the Book of Genesis, and were confirmed in Peter’s second letter, where he remembers when Peter, James, and John were formed to witness the majesty of the one who was born. There are always three. The cage in which this lady found herself is the holy sepulcher, her immortal skull – where the drama began, and where it comes to its fulfillment. She saw the sign of her approaching birth from above, in the form of a woman holding a child and the three witnesses to this event. She – the emanation of her ancestral being – will awaken in that cage to return to her ancestral being, enhanced by becoming one with her celestial self.

While in this world of Caesar, seemingly detached and lost, you are not, for your human imagination is a wonderful power. It is yours to use lovingly, or as unlovingly as those men did with their dreams of wars, in order to get a little medal and be promoted. So what if they do? Eventually they will all be buried, and two generations later no one will know they ever existed. Our cemeteries are filled with monuments to those who thought themselves so important, yet no one recalls who they were. So I say: what does it matter if you own the world and lose your life?

I urge you to seek the kingdom of God, for when you do, you come into a power unknown to mortal man. All of the atom bombs in the world cannot compare to the power you are destined to fall heir to. You will possess a power that can still the world. But you will never know this power without love. With this power, unrestrained, you would still a nation, face its inhabitants toward the ocean, and put the idea of entering it in their mind. Then when you release this power they would all march into the ocean. But you will never know a power greater than you know love. The power known to earthly man is nothing compared to the power of love. With that power you can stop the thought process of another, change it completely, and when you allow that energy to flow once more, he will move in a different direction, not even realizing that a change had taken place within him.

When the embodiment of reason asked the Risen Lord: “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you and the power to set you free?” Imagination replied: “You have no power over me were it not given you from above.” Just imagine knowing you have that kind of power! You came to play a part called Man, and when you have experienced it, you will play the part called Jesus Christ. His play takes place in heaven, which is within. And when you tell your story, those who hear your words on the outside will either believe or disbelieve you, and you will have no power to persuade them otherwise. Those who do not believe sit in darkness, breathing war as recorded in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. Although the salaries of these men come from the pockets of civilians, they are believing our country into a militaristic and aggressive nation, in order to become more glorious in their own little minds.

But I tell you, your ancestral being called the son of God shed his blood for you that you may have life in yourself. I know, for when my body was torn in two from top to bottom, I saw that blood of God as my own wonderful ancestral self. I am an extension of that self, not another – for that would imply there was a greater creative power than I am. I have seen this body of love. I wore it when we embraced. I will return to it and wear it forever when I leave this body of death for the last time. Then we will not be two, for I – an extension of myself – will return to myself, adding to God’s glory, His luminosity, and translucency, giving him a greater creative power by reason of the part I played, called Neville.

I urge you to use your imagination lovingly on behalf of everyone, and believe in the reality of your imaginal acts. If you have a friend who would like to be gainfully employed, listen carefully until you hear his voice tell you of his new position. Feel his hand clasp yours. See the smile on his lips. Use every sense you can possibly bring to bear into the imaginal scene. Persist until you feel the thrill of reality, then drop it and let that scene fulfill itself on the outside. We are told that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Your imaginal act created for your friend in the kingdom of heaven is that seed. Don’t pick it up to see if it is growing; just leave it alone, and it will grow and bloom as a solid fact in your world. Then you will have found this hidden cause within you called Christ.

Christ, the power and wisdom of God, is in you as your own wonderful eternal being. He will never leave you or forsake you as told us in the 13th chapter of Hebrews. If, perchance, one day you are swept into an unlovely state and go through hell, remember: there is that in you who will not leave you or forsake you; and if you know this principle you can detach yourself from the state and it will vanish, as you move into a more desirable one.

There is truly nothing new under the sun. That which was recently recorded in the Atlantic Monthly is the same as that which was recorded in Genesis as the first frightful act, when Cain slew his brother Abel. This same act is taking place over and over again, and if a man knows how to detach himself he need not be pulled into that state. While in the army I was told I could not get out, but I dared to assume I was out. I acted, in my imagination, as I would act were I free to come and go as I chose. I persisted in this assumption for nine days. Then the one who first denied my request granted my freedom, and that day I was honorably discharged.

People plan a depression for personal gain. There are those who sell short for a personal gain. All kinds of things are done in order to be known as a billionaire; yet in time they die, to leave their billions behind for those who can’t even remember their names. Leaving this little section of time, he who was known as a billionaire here, moves into another section of time to once more seek his fortune. So the words are true: there are some standing here who will not taste of death.

May I tell you: no one can leave this earth until he awakens, because the earth does not terminate at the point where the senses cease to register it. When you shed your little garment, you will still be on this earth in a body like the one you left behind, only young, vital, and wonderful – but your environment will change. You may leave this world a billionaire to find yourself shining shoes, if that is to be your lot to fulfill. Your ancestral being knows what it will take to weave you into the likeness of himself, for you must be perfect as he is perfect. You will not be brought to the end until you can actually be superimposed upon his image and fit it perfectly. Then you are one!

No one ever leaves this age of death until he awakens. This earth stretches for a length of time long beyond the three score and ten. The world remains terrestrial, with all of its struggles. We continue to marry and die, to know sickness and health, sorrow and joy, just as we do here, as we go from one little section of time into another and then another until – in the eyes of our ancestral self – we are as He is. So you see that statement is true: “There are those standing here who will not taste of death.” The apostles who are called will not taste of death. No power can sweep them away from this section of time, until they go up that spiral roadway into the sepulcher where their drama began.

No mortal eye can see the kingdom of heaven, and it cannot be entered from without, but must be taken violently. This I know from experience. When I went up, it was with such force I felt a tremendous pressure in my head where I was pressed in, just a little bit left of center. I tried my very best to go beyond it, but I could not. It was so crowded I pressed myself right into the kingdom as a living mural, having entered it with a force akin to violence. I have now fulfilled the 11th chapter of the Book of Matthew: “The kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and the violent take it by force.” The old age of the law and the promise up until John the Baptist is behind us now. There is no need to do violence against your body in order to get into the kingdom. No diet or suppression of the normal urges of life will get you in. Only when you are one with your eternal self so that you can be superimposed upon him and fit perfectly will you find yourself split in two to be absorbed by the life of the being who kept you alive here as something on the outside and, like a sponge, you become one with it. Then, having life in yourself, you will return to your skull where the dream began, arriving with such force your head reverberates like thunder. But, knowing that there are people in this world who plot and plan violence, don’t try to compensate; rather plot and plan things of love and affection. Do that and you cannot be drawn into another’s circle.

I tell you: you are an immortal being. You were the Son of God long before the universe came into being. It was you who brought it into appearance for this great experiment. You are a ray of the being you really are, one with He who is radiating you. And He will not forsake you, but will continue to put you through the paces as He fashions you into his likeness. Then He receives unto himself all of the experiences through which you will have passed, and is enhanced and glorified by them. He is afflicted as you are afflicted. He suffers as you suffer, and when you return you and He are one, for the being radiating is one with the ray.

Take me seriously! Know what you want and then claim you have it. Tell a friend about it and feel his excitement for you. Persuade yourself that what you are imagining is true. Believe in its reality and it will come to pass as an objective fact on this level, I promise you. Then when the image is perfect, you will return to your ancestral self, and time will no longer be necessary between the imaginal act and the fact.

There are many levels: a level here, a dream level, and a level of spirit waking, where every thought is a fact and is known. From that level you return through various barriers to this, the lowest level, where everything is completely concentrated and limited in these little garments of flesh. Here we are slaves to our mortal bodies, serving them morning, noon and night as we feed, clothe, and shelter them. When you feed your body you must assimilate what it eats. Then you must eliminate its waste and care for it.

Every child born of woman is a slave to the body he wears. There is no slavery comparable to the slavery of the body. If I were a slave to one who had purchased me and I must feed and clothe him, though he has millions and I have nothing, he is as much a slave to his body as I am to mine, for he and he alone must assimilate and eliminate for himself. No matter how many slaves he may have, he cannot command them to perform the functions of his body for him. He must perform them all for himself. Everyone who comes into this world becomes a slave to the body he wears. 

We are told in Philippians: “He emptied himself of all that was his and became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross.” When God came here he found himself a slave and was born in the likeness of men, thereby entering slavery. And I can’t conceive of any slavery comparable to the slavery of the body. Just imagine: you must wash it, shave it, bathe it, and do everything for it. And when it begins to wear out, you must get glasses for its eyes, false teeth, hearing aides and heart transplants – to name but a few. You must continue to patch it up while remaining its slave to the very end. Do you know of any greater form of slavery? While in our teens and twenties we never think that our body might get old and wear out, yet one day we turn a little corner of time and it becomes so obvious. Although the body wears out and becomes weaker and weaker, you are still its slave. I cannot conceive of any greater slavery.

But try to live a noble life, for you are immortal and cannot die. He who radiates you will never in eternity forsake you. He could not, for you and He are one; and when you return from your journey, you will be with the one who radiated you, just as you were before the journey began.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—11/15/1968

The most that can be expected of any man is that he be true to the vision he has seen. Paul, the greatest and possibly the most influential figure in the history of Christianity, was such a man. When brought in chains before the king, he said: “Here I stand on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers. Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Here I stand testifying, saying only what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass.’ As he made his defense Festus said, ‘Paul, you are mad; your great learning is turning you mad.’ But Paul said, ‘I am not mad. I am speaking the sober truth. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought in me.'” 

Paul knew no physical Christ, but defined him as the power of God and the wisdom of God, telling us: “From now on I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer. I know only Christ and him crucified.” Paul urged us to always bear in mind that scripture was a mystery – a shocking mystery. It is told so beautifully, unless you take the trouble to look up the words as you read them you will accept their surface meaning, as one billion Christians do. Tonight, if I used the word, “crucified”, the average Christian would see a man impaled upon a wooden cross, or maybe hanging on a tree, but that is not what Paul meant when he used the word, “crucified.”

If you will look up the word, “crucified” in the James Strong’s Concordance, you will discover that it is made up of two Greek words. The first word means “union by association; companionship; completeness” and the second word means “to extinguish passion.” That is the purpose of the union. 

Paul, seeing Christ as the creative power of God, says: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Then he continued by saying: “You were bought for a price, so glorify God in your body.” The price paid is union with Christ. That is the heavenly vision Paul referred to when he said: “Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” For by this act God gives you himself, thereby transforming your mortal body of beliefs into a body of glory. This is done by a creative act. 

You will find scripture is filled with creative acts. In one story, the Risen Christ is made to say: “Who touched me, for I perceive that power has gone forth from me.” (The word “touch” here means “to set on fire” and is a euphemism for “to lie with a woman,” as touch is a creative act.) The story is told of a woman who touched the hem of the garment of a man called the Son of God and was healed, but Christ is not a man, Christ is the creative power of God. That power is expressed through man supernaturally, not physically, for God, his Father, is Spirit and therefore he is Spirit. You cannot separate Christ from God, for God and his creative power are one, but it takes a man to express God’s power. 

In the Book of Matthew, his disciples came to him, saying: “Explain the parable of the sower,” and he answered: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world. The good seed means the sons of God.” When the Son of man comes he plants his spiritual seed in those whom he calls. This act of crucifixion (which is the planting of the seed), far from being painful, is the most ecstatic experience possible. No union on earth can compare in ecstasy to this spiritual act. And when you, an individual, are called, you are told to “There remain with God.” There is no need to change your job, join a monastery, or go into a nunnery after the act. If you are a housewife, mother, father, businessman, or doctor when you are called, there remain with God and lock the memory of what has happened within you. Do not broadcast it to the world, for – not understanding – they would condemn you for talking such nonsense; yet this is the way God raises the dead. 

Only Christ is raised. “We are born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” But to be raised, the seed must be penetrated by Christ. This ecstatic union takes place your own wonderful human imagination as you walk the earth doing earthly things. Then, in due time you are raised and born from above as the drama of Jesus Christ unfolds within you. 

The word translated “seed: is the Greek word “sperma,” which means “the male sperm.” Penetrated by Spirit, he leaves his spiritual sperm which bears his image of God which you carry within you, until it completes itself and you are raised, born from above, and unfold within yourself everything said of Christ in scripture. This is how God, being the Son of man, produces sons for the kingdom. 

Now the Risen Lord asks this question: “Who do people say that the Son of man is?” and they answered: “Some say John the Baptist come again, others say Elijah and still others say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Then, identifying himself with the Son of man, he asked: “But who do you say that I am?” (You will notice that when he first asked the question concerning the Son of man they brought in a physical state, but when he asked: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered: “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” Then he said: “Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to your but my Father who is in heaven.” Here we see that the drama must unfold within the individual, for no man of flesh and blood could have told Peter, it had to be revealed to him. 

In Paul’s case, as in Peter’s their seat of authority was not in scripture as a dead written code, but in experience. Having experienced scripture, they could identify the Son of man with the I AM and Christ, for he is the power of God who impregnates the chosen ones. Eventually all will be called, and all will be raised through the impregnation of Christ, the Son of man who is God. 

I know that on the surface this shocks people. If anyone read the Bible as I have just explained it to you, they would close the book and call it pornographic, yet from beginning to end, the Bible speaks only of the creative power of God. You can take that same creative power and use it here in the world of Caesar, for it is your own wonderful human imagination. If you will conjure a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream and remain faithful to that vision as Paul was to the heavenly vision, your desire will come to pass. 

Paul did not expect the vision. It came upon him suddenly, like some great catastrophic earthquake. You cannot conjure the vision, it simply happens. But you can conjure a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your desire, remain faithful to it and it will project itself upon the screen of space. I’ve done it unnumbered times.

Take a simple scene. Would someone congratulate you if they heard of your good fortune? Then allow them to do so. Accept their congratulations, just as you would if they came to you in the flesh. Now remain faithful to that vision. If you need a more complex scene, like two people discussing your success, eavesdrop on them. Listen to their words of praise or envy, then do not forget that vision. Conjured in your imagination, carry it with you, knowing that what it implies will come to pass, for its potency is not in the scene itself, but what the scene implies. 

So Paul, in this heavenly vision, saw the creative act of God. He saw individuals being raised and singled out to play their part, for God needs man as his agent. Every error (as well as truth), needs man to express it. God uses man as his agent to express everything in this shadow world, as well as the spiritual world. And so in the creative act of God it takes man, but not a man of flesh and blood. 

Everything here is reduced, as we are completely encased and insulated. What thrills you here pales to nothing when the garment is taken off and you are Spirit, performing the act of God by glorifying him in your body. As his image, called Christ, you radiate the glory of God and are the express image of his person as you impregnate, but it is done selectively, never haphazardly.

The night I was called and taken into the presence of the Risen Christ, I had no idea it would happen. The year was 1929. Having read scripture before the vision, I thought the words “Faith, hope and love” were the words of Paul, but this night I discovered they were the words of God spoken by Paul, for he said: “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought in me,” therefore these were the words of Christ.

The night I was taken into the presence of the risen Christ (the embodiment of God’s creative power) all I could see was infinite love. All I could think of was love. And when he asked me the simple question: “What is the greatest thing in the world,” I answered automatically: “Faith, hope, and love. These three, but the greatest of these is love.” At that moment he embraced me and we fused. That was my heavenly vision, my union with the Risen Lord. I can’t describe the thrill I experienced when I became one with the Spirit and the body of the Risen Lord.

Then I was taken to stand before a being who seemed to radiate infinite power. In him I felt no compassion or love, simply raw power. As his eyes penetrated mine, I heard his thoughts, as a voice rang out in the heavens, with this command: “Time to act.” At that moment I was propelled out of that divine assembly to find myself back in this little insulated body and – like Mary – I pondered what had happened to me. 

I was only twenty-four at the time and knew nothing of the mysteries and wondered what had happened, as my room was flooded with an unearthly light which remained for the longest time. Then, in good time the mystery unraveled itself within me. We are told: “When he was about thirty years of age, he began his ministry.” Thirty years later I experienced my resurrection and birth from above. That pregnancy took thirty years to ripen and come to fulfillment in me.

If today you took me before any person who had the power to put me in prison or put me to death, like Paul I would still remain faithful to the vision. Paul said: “O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” The word “Agrippa” means “a wild horse tamer”. The mind is symbolized as a horse. Here is a wild mind that Festus considered mad, but Paul knew he was not mad. He was speaking the sober truth, but it is shocking and difficult to believe that this is what God told the prophets. 

Paul told the Galatians that the story of Abraham was an allegory. In the story, Abraham was told that, in spite of his age and the fact that the womb had ceased to be after the way of women for Sarah, his wife, she would conceive and bear a son. If this story is an allegory and Abraham is the origin of all humanity (for he is the father of the multitudes) then everything that comes from this origin must be an allegory, for all things run true to their source. If the origin is an allegory, no matter how you bring it down to culminate in Jesus Christ that. too, has to be an allegory. But that does not mean it is not true. 

Scripture is a great truth told in the form of an allegory. Try to find out the fictitious character of its stories and discover the meaning. And when you do, hold onto your discovery until vision either confirms or causes you to modify your belief. The story is told that Abraham had two wives and two sons, one born of a free woman and one born of a slave. The free woman, called Sarah, bore Isaac; therefore he was spiritually born and not something of the flesh. Sarah was told that she would be blessed with a child of God. If I am blessed with the begetting of the son of God then I must be his bride, his emanation yet his wife ’til this great sleep of death is past. 

Paul experienced this heavenly vision and remained faithful to it. He did not waver even though they tortured him. Time and again he was brought before some tribunal. Being a very learned man and one of the Pharisees, he was born a Roman, yet was also a Jew; therefore, he could claim whatever suited him. If the Jews began to persecute him, he would claim his Roman citizenship – or his Jewish ancestry when necessary. He had everything, but in spite of his great learning, when the vision possessed him he could do other than live by it. 

Paul was used in the capacity of Christ as one who expresses the creative power of God. Having experienced the crucifixion, he wrote these lovely stories concerning his experience, saying:” “I have decided to know nothing whatsoever but Jesus Christ and him crucified”” The average person will see a man impaled upon a cross, but having had union in order to extinguish passion, one becomes the sower, sowing seeds to the selective. And the one selected should not scream it from the housetops, but like Mary was told in the 2nd chapter of Luke, keep the vision locked in your heart and ponder it until the time is fulfilled. 

No physical child is born, for the child you meet in the mystery is only a sign of your spiritual birth; but you couldn’t be born from above except through the resurrection of Christ within you. Therefore, man is born again through the resurrection of Christ, who has to be within him in order to rise from within. Only that which is now in you can rise in you. Only that which descended can ascend. So the seed descends into man, and when it matures Christ rises and Man is born from above. 

I know it doesn’t make sense on this level. It cannot, for it does not take place here. As a child I was taught the Christian story by my mother and my Sunday school teacher. I believed them and never once questioned the historicity of Jesus Christ or the physical reality of the being. Then came the night of the shock when I discovered that Christ was the power of God buried in me, waiting for the fullness of time when it would explode and reveal me to myself. I didn’t realize how literally true the statement: “Unless you believe that I am he you die in your sins,” was, until the night he erupted in me and I discovered who I really was. Even then I did not know I had been singled out to play the part of the apostle. But it’s all done on a high spiritual plane, all within the individual. 

In the Old Testament the story is told of Jacob who wrestled with the Lord and was touched on his thigh, causing it to shrink. Read this story carefully. Look up the word “thigh” in your Concordance and you will discover what is really being revealed. The truth is being told in a gentle manner so that the so-called “good” people of the world will not be shocked. 

Perhaps if you are here for the first time you, too, will be shocked by my words, but those of you who have been coming regularly will not be, for you have been trained to understand. Like Paul, “If you will not receive the things I tell you of the earth, how will you receive the things I tell you of heaven?” What images can I use to tell you of the heavenly state when there are no images here to describe it? Do you know that “Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of men the things already prepared for those who love the Lord?” What image of earth could I use to describe things that cannot be seen by the mortal eye? Or understood by the mortal mind? 

I can describe the moment of the crucifixion, but I cannot describe the ecstasy. That night, in vision I led a throng in procession to the house of God, when suddenly a voice came out of the nowhere saying: “God walks with them.” A woman at my right questioned the voice, asking: “If God walks with us, where is he?” And the voice replied: “At your side.” Taking the words literally, she turned to her left (she could have turned to her right) and looking into my face she began to laugh and said: “What! Neville is God?” and the voice answered: “Yes, in the act of waking.” 

Then the voice spoke from within me and to me alone, saying: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and I , knowing the end of the sentence would be that he is dreaming he is I, became so emotional that I was sucked into this body on the bed as my hands became vortices, my head a vortex, my side a vortex and the soles of my feet vortices. These six vortices created the greatest ecstasy imaginable, a feeling that was the exact opposite of intense pain! 

Having experienced the vision, I have not been able to forget the moment he buried himself within me. And because He did, in due time He rose in me; yet I am still encased in this insulated body until that moment when he calls me to return to the glory that was mine before I was sent, restoring my rank at that time. I do not know when; I only know that when the moment comes that he calls, no power on earth can stop me from answering his call. 

So the heavenly vision is a glorious experience. Everyone is destined one day to awaken as God, because everyone was selected in the beginning. One day you will have a mystical experience that is sheer ecstasy. Its purpose will be revealed later when you rise and are born from above. Then, if you are a teacher or an apostle (or whatever your role will be) you will play your part until that moment when your insulation is removed and men call you dead. But far from being dead, you will be in the kingdom.

You will not have gone through the little gate called death to be restored to like in a terrestrial world like this one, to do all of the things we do here. That’s the normal passage of death until that moment in time when Christ rises with you and you are a Son of the resurrection and die no more. For you there will be no more passages through the little gate called death, but – wearing a body of glory which was the price paid by Christ – you will live in an entirely different age. 

There was never any money exchanged for your life. God paid the price by dying that you may live. He exchanged his life for yours, and you bear his seed which has the power to save you. God is the sower and you are the field. The purpose of the planting of that seed is so that you could become the Son of the kingdom. God is now waiting for the unnumbered sons which he promised to Abraham – more sons than the stars of the heaven, more than the sands of the sea. 

In the end everyone will be saved, but there are degrees in the kingdom, just as there are in the army here on earth. Not everyone is an apostle, a teacher, or a miracle worker. The highest rank is the apostle who God calls, selects, and sends in his name so the apostle can say: “He who sees me sees him who sent me, who is God the Father, for I know my Father and you know not your God.” 

May I tell you: when you experience the heavenly vision you will never forget it or turn aside from it. After it happens in you, your values change. You have no desire to possess things any more, because you know you own it all. King Agrippa had everything and possessed nothing. Paul had nothing and possessed everything. What could Paul want when he knew the truth of the 50th Psalm: “If I were hungry I would not tell you for the earth is mine and all within it. I would simply slay and eat, for the cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” I know this statement to be true, and have no desire to possess things anymore. All I need now is enough to pay Caesar his taxes. I want to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but I have no ambition to pile up things of this world. 

Tonight, take any passage from scripture and check each word in the Concordance, for the meaning of words changes. Perhaps 2000 years ago those who heard the word “crucify” understood what Paul meant, but through the years our priesthoods have organized the great truth and changed the meaning of the word. Now we see a man impaled upon a cross and can ask ourselves the same question asked the Galatians: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish having begun with the Spirit, you are now ending with the flesh?” Are you seeing a man of flesh, rather than the dramatization of the power of God? 

When you read scripture, see a man step on the stage (like a moving picture) and think of it as an allegory. Learn to distinguish between what you are seeing and what you are being told. And when you discover the fictitious character, extract its meaning and abide by it. Jesus Christ is portrayed as crucified, as having union by association to extinguish passion, at which time the seed (which is the image of the Living God) is planted, making your redemption assured. 

You cannot be born from above (which is essential to enter the kingdom of God) unless first Jesus Christ rises in you. So you are redeemed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ in you . Nothing can emerge from man which was not first submerged, so Christ has to descend. When one the being who has already been raised and selected for that part plants the seed, the image of God descends, and nothing can ascend but that which first descended.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—12/01/1969

The Christian world calls this the season of Advent; the coming of the great event or person; the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course Paul, in his letter to the Galatians doesn’t condemn it, but wonders if they really got the message, saying: “I notice you observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain.” There is nothing wrong with observing this season of the year, as long as you understand it as the coming of the great event or person.

Tonight I will tell you what I know from experience, from which my conviction was born. I must, however, use certain imagery in order to explain it. so I ask that you follow me in your imagination. Your wonderful human imagination is a reproduction of the Divine Imagination. Think of the human imagination as brain cells in the mind of the dreamer, which Divine Imagination sent out to infinity for a divine purpose. These brain cells are destined to return, like a boomerang, right back into the center of Divine Imagination as the dreamer who is God the Father.

The going out as sons is not easy. It was never intended to be. It takes the horrors of the world to awaken and expand his sons into God the Father. I promise you: the day will come when the divine breath will breathe over you and you will awaken in your immortal tomb. You, too, will leave that tomb to hold the infant child in your arms. He will be the symbol of your return, revealing the end of your horrors. Although you are then God the Father, you will not discover this for yourself until one hundred and thirty-nine days later, [when] God’s son, David, will reveal your true identity.

Before I retired last night I was wondering what I would talk to you about, and this morning about 1:30, I found myself preparing dinner for three friends. (I took care of the funeral of two of them many years ago in New York City. The third may be gone, as I haven’t heard from her for a very long time.) I was serving Barbados yams, which are unlike the ones we have here. It is a root weighing anywhere from two to thirty pounds. Its covering is dark brown, while the interior is snowy white.

As I approached the table, two jackals or silver foxes, approached, jumped on the table, and in the most vicious manner the father jackal tore a large hunk out of the back of his son and began to nail his son upon a board with its center gouged out to fit that hunk. The extended portion of the cross was wood, while the son’s body formed the upright part of the cross. Then I awoke.

This morning, I went to The Lost Language of Symbolism, by Bayley, where I read that the jackal is the pathfinder in the desert. He is equated with the Egyptian god, Osiris, who, as the “opener of ways to the gods, he brings three to the mountains.”

In the audience tonight are two ladies whose experiences I would like to share. One lady found herself in a crowd, looking at a woman surrounded by three men, who suddenly disappeared. The lady approached and asked their names, to which my friend replied: “Faith, hope and charity.” (The word “charity” is translated “love” in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and love is right.) What a wonderful vision for her. She saw the three that he brought to the mountaintop, and knew their names.

The Father took us, the brain cells of his own being, and nailed us upon the cross that we may go out to infinity in a horrible nightmare. Then, like a boomerang, we will curl around and return to the center of the dreamer of the dream as God the Father.

This is the great mystery of Christmas, the day when God the Father is born as Jesus, which means “savior”. In the 43rd and 45th chapters of the Book of Isaiah, we read: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior and besides me there is no God.” Here we discover that Jesus, our savior, is the Lord God Himself.

Everyone will return to the very heart of the dreamer as the dreamer himself. You were nailed down and sent out to infinity to experience all of its horrors; and when you have experienced them all, you will return as the being who conceived the world and played all the parts. This is the mystery of Christmas. Everyone, eventually, will know that he is the one called Jesus. The word “Christ” is the Greek word for “messiah”, and simply means, “the anointed of God; to rule all of the people of God.” Jesus is the Lord God Himself and Christ is his anointed, who will save the people from their sins and deliver them from their conquerors.

Who is this anointed one? David. He who delivered Israel from the Philistines and brought down the giant Goliath. When you return to your source, you will know that you are God the Father and that his son, David, is your son, for David will stand before you and call you, “Father.” Then and only then will you know who you really are.

What I saw in vision was beautiful imagery of he who finds the path in the wilderness. Nailed upon your cross, you play the part of man until you return – not as a son of God, but as God Himself. Leaving paradise as a little one, you overcome death and return – expanded to encompass all – as the dreamer himself. This is the mystery of Christmas, which is taking place every moment of time.

Another lady shared this experience, saying: “You were with me all through the night, explaining the mystery of imagining. At one point you said: ‘Come, brothers, show how it works’ and instantly a man appeared at my left, and another man – holding an open ledger – appeared at my right. Approaching the man on my left, he said: ‘Our funds are exhausted.’ Looking at him intensely, the brother said not a word, but simply turned and disappeared. Then you said to me, ‘you see? It is just as easy as that. You simply do what is to be done and go your way.’ The one with the ledger, now with an expression of joy on his face, looks at the ledger and sees that – through some miracle – the money is recorded there.” I showed her how imagination works. Believing in the reality of an unseen state, my brother imagined the ledger showed a healthy balance, just as the man desired it to be.

Now, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he says: “Paul, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ – not by men nor through man, but through the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.” Although the letter is signed “Paul” it is a corporate letter “from the brethren who are with me.” The brethren are those who have awakened from the dream of life. I introduced her to the brethren, who showed her how easy the law of imagining works. Looking intently, he saw the ledger reflect back a balance in the black, then went his way, unconcerned as to how it would come about, as the look of amazement on the other man’s face indicated the change.

This is what I am trying to convey to everyone who will listen. You can prove the law, but the story of Christ cannot be proved on this level. Its truth can only be known from experience. If you will but imagine you are the man (or woman) you want to be and walk convinced that you already are, in the twinkle of an eye the ledger will change. Things will happen in your outer world and your desire will be fulfilled. You need not be concerned as to how it will come about, simply let your Imagination create it.

It will appear in such a normal, natural way that you will be inclined to credit the means employed, rather than the imaginal act which did it. The world will say it would have happened anyway; but let me tell you: it would not, for imagining creates reality. It could not have happened without your imaginal act to support it, but when it comes to pass, it always appears by a natural means. It is miraculous only to the individual who sees the radical change and remembers his imaginal act which created the means that produced the end result.

In a few days, we will be celebrating the birth of Imagination in the individual. Don’t think some little individual was born 2,000 years ago. Everyone agreed to go out and experience the horrors of his own making, knowing that he would return to the mind of the dreamer as the Dreamer Himself. This return is told in the gospel. The story begins with the resurrection, for without it there could be no birth, no expansion, necessary to encompass God the Father.

The divine breath will breathe upon you and you will awaken in your immortal tomb with a built-in, innate wisdom as to how to get out. We are all in that same immortal tomb, as told us in the 87th Psalm. Pointing out different places in the same immortal tomb, he said: “This one was born here, that one there and that one here.” Coming out of that tomb, everyone is destined to hold the infant Christ in his arms and say: “Let me depart in peace according to thy word.”

Having heard salvation’s story, believe it and simply continue your journey until you fulfill it. May I tell you: no one will falter. No one can fail – even the most horrible being imaginable, for he is a son of God, playing the part he has to play. Everyone will play every part in order to say: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I have played all the parts. My memory is now returning, and I am remembering the horrors of my deeds; so I can now forgive everyone for whatever he is doing – or will do – because these things he agreed to do, as he moves towards the end of the drama. Then, having moved out to infinity, he will curl like a boomerang, to return to the mind of the dreamer as the one who cast him out.

My dream was not a pleasant sight to see. Here was this huge father, tearing a large portion out of the back of his son; and then – as though he had human hands – he placed him on his back and nailed him to the wood, leaving the upright as the body itself. That was the jackal, the Egyptian Osiris, the pathfinder in the desert who knows the path and brings the three to the mountaintop. The three that you bring with you to the mountaintop are not Peter, Paul, and James – but faith, hope, and love, the three the lady saw so clearly in her vision.

The lady who learned how to use the law saw it perfectly, too. The law operates by faith. If you believe, no effort is necessary to see the fulfillment of your every desire. If you go to the bank and have money deposited there equal to your check, you will give them your check in the belief that – because of your faith – they will give you the money you desire. Treat your desire in the same manner. Knowing your desire exists in your imagination, simply expect its fulfillment in your outer world. Try it. I have lived by this law all of my life and know, that by applying this principle, all of your desires will be fulfilled.

Now, tradition tells us that the Christmas season begins on Andrew’s Day, which is the first Sunday nearest the 30th of November. In the gospel story, Andrew is the first disciple in the list of twelve, so his day is the beginning of the four Sundays known as Advent: the coming of the great event or person; the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But when Jesus comes you will not see a being on the outside, for he is in you, and his coming is his awakening in you – as you. You already are the Lord Jesus Christ, but you will not know it until you return to the very center of the one who sent you out into this world of hell. If you don’t believe this is hell, read the morning papers. They are filled with the happenings of people who do not know what they are doing. But it is necessary to experience all the blows of life in order to awaken and expand that little brain cell in the mind of the dreamer, who is God the Father. Contracting, you go out to the very limit of infinity, to return – expanded – into the very center of the mind of the dreamer, as the dreamer himself.

A way for your return was prepared for you before that the world was. This was done by setting up a son called David, the anointed one, as told us in the Book of Samuel. After the Lord had rejected everyone, David – he who was watching the sheep – was brought in, and the prophet Samuel was told to “Rise and anoint him. This is he.” Then the spirit of God came mightily upon David from that day forward. And in the Psalms, the Lord declared: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee. I have found David; with my holy oil I have anointed him. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’” This is implied in the New Testament, when Paul said: “It pleased God to reveal his son in me.” He did not say who that son was, however, and the priesthoods of the world have changed scripture to make it conform to their misconceptions of the story.

Jesus is Awakened Imagination, who is God the Father; and if he is a father, he must have a son. His son is David, the sum total of his journey through humanity. You will know your journey through humanity is over when David stands before you and calls you Father. He is the symbol of the Christ, the anointed one, a man after your own heart, who did all your will.

In this world you have done – are doing, and will continue to do – the will of the Father; and believe it or not, you are doing it in love. And when you have finished the work you set out to do, you will return as the Father, to discover that it was all a dream. This universe, which seems so real, is a dream. We are eternal dreamers, dreaming non-eternal dreams. Falling asleep, you have the illusion of a fabulous journey in space, interlocked with time; but when time is finished, you will awake to discover that you never left your eternal home. That you were never born and have never died, save in your dream.

When time is finished, the breath of the divine being will breathe upon you. You will awaken within that immortal tomb, to come out and see the symbolism which was prepared before that the world was. Taking the infant child wrapped in swaddling clothes in your arms, you will see a heavenly smile appear upon his face, telling you that your journey into the world of death is over. But, because your brothers are still asleep, you will remain here for just a little while to encourage them; for they are all coming back, whether they have just started their journey, or are now returning. Those of you who are here now are returning. I know, for no man comes to me save my Father calls him, and I and my Father are one. Having returned to my Father as the Father, I am only drawing those who are returning, to encourage you to continue for the little while that is left.

The story of Christ is not the anniversary of a little boy who was physically born 2,000 years ago, but about the individual’s spiritual birth from within. This will happen in you when the fullness of time comes. Then he will send the spirit of his son into your heart crying, “Father.” If the spirit of God’s son calls you Father, are you not the one who is dreaming the entire dream? The time has come for this experience to be yours, or you would not be here. But when that moment comes I do not know; only your heavenly Father knows.

There is a peculiar, innate fear in man that he will never find the Father. That is because he does not know what he is looking for. Man thinks it is wealth or security, fame, or marriage and a family, when he is really looking for the Father. But how long, vast, and severe, the anguish ere he finds and knows the Father, is long to tell. He will find him, however, but only through his son. I could tell you from now until the ends of time that you are God the Father, but for you it would only be hearsay until it is experienced. But one day you will know the truth of my words; for God’s son, David, will call you “Father,” and – strangely enough – you will know this relationship more surely than you know anything here on earth.

Now, here is a statement from the 4th chapter of Ecclesiastes: “I saw all the living that move about under the sun, also the second youth which shall stand in his place. There was no end to all the people. He was over all of them, yet those who will come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.” Tonight there are hundreds of millions of people who would not be interested in hearing what you have heard this night. They are those who will come after. At the present time, they would rather have a huge diamond that’s worth a million dollars, or stocks and bonds that pay good dividends. Their hunger is for some little trinket – which will turn to ash – rather than the revelation of the second youth, who will reveal their Fatherhood. Surely this is vanity and a striving after wind. In his 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of this youth as the second man, saying: “The first man is of the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven and as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven.” I wish he had called him the second youth, in keeping with Ecclesiastes, but it doesn’t really matter. It is the second being, called the “New Man”, in whom we all aspire.

I know that the sensation of resurrection is one of waking. I actually awoke and wondered how long I had been there and who put me there. Blake explained it so beautifully in his poem, “The Mental Traveler.”

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

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

And if the Babe is born a Boy
He’s given to a Woman Old
Who nails him down upon a rock
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.”

I saw this in the symbolism of the god of Egypt with the jackal face, yet with hands, which nailed him down. I gasped as I watched the horror, yet he had no compassion, as he tore the back of his son and removed an area equal to the gouged out area of the board. This occurred just as I began to serve those who are dead.

In the 4th chapter of the Book of Daniel, the decree was made to: “Let his mind be changed from the man’s and let a beast’s mind be given him.” Are we not animals here in this world? Today’s paper certainly could convince anyone that we are. This is part of the unfolding horror, because the heart and mind of God was taken when the tree of life was felled. Then the heart and mind of the animal was substituted until one finds the Father; and when you find him, you will discover that you never left your immortal home. In the true sense of the word you were never born and have never died, save in your Imagination.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—09/29/1969

Judas is called the betrayer, but what was it that he betrayed? Judas betrayed the great secret of the messiah and where Jesus might be found. His is the most important role in the great mystery of God. 

“I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will. Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Then in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah, the Lord reveals the Savior saying; “I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.” If God brought a savior to humanity, he had to bring himself – as Jesus, which simply means “I am.” This he revealed in the great “I am” statements: I am the vine; I am the door; I am the shepherd; I am the bread. In those statements Jesus is declaring that unless you believe that your “I am” is Lord, you die in your sins; for your “I am” is Jesus – your Savior – the man who will rule as God, as he promised. 

When you hear the word “Jesus” you may think of someone outside of yourself; but I tell you: your I AMness is Jesus – sound asleep. He is buried in you and will one day awaken in you. Asleep, you are a son of God; but when he awakes, you are God the Father. Sending his sons into the world to conquer death, the sons return as the Father of all life. “Beloved, we are now the sons of God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, and see him as he is.” 

As a son of God, it does not appear what you will be; but when God appears, you will know him, because you will be just like him! That is the great messianic secret! And when that secret is unveiled in you, you will see the importance of separating the words “Jesus” and “Christ”- as stated in the Book of Revelation: “Come Lord Jesus and his Christ,” for Christ is the messiah – God’s great son David, who reveals you as his Father, Jesus. 

Man has completely forgotten the mystery and speaks of Jesus as a little man who was born of a woman two thousand years ago – when Jesus is God himself. Your awareness of being is Jesus, who is God the Father. The great secret of the Christian faith is the revelation of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The fatherhood of God is Jesus in you. Do you not realize that Jesus and his Christ are in you? Did not David (the Christ) come in the spirit and call Jesus “Lord”? If David were not in you, you would never know that you are God the Father. 

One day David came out of me. He stood before me and I knew exactly who he was and our relationship with one another, even before he called me father. Now I know that everyone will one day have the identical experience, for there is only one God, only one Father. We are all members of that one body which share in this wonderful promised end, as everything resolves itself into the one who is God the Father. 

So Judas reveals the messianic secret by telling you that you will find the Lord Jesus in heaven, and that heaven is within you. If anyone should say; “Come – look: here he is, or: there he is,” don’t believe him; for the kingdom of heaven is within you. When you find Jesus, your journey is over. Then your heart will go out to everyone, for you will know they are your brothers. You are not going to become sons of God; you are already gods, sons of the Most High, becoming God Himself. 

God is able to give himself to you as though there were no other – just God and you. Believe that, and the most incredible story ever told – which is the pattern of salvation – will unfold in you to reveal you as God the Father. That is the story of the Bible. 

The Old Testament is an adumbration, a foreshadowing, while the New is its fulfillment, written as a rough draft. Paul wrote his thirteen letters at least twenty years – chronologically speaking – before the first gospel, which is Mark; yet no book spells it out completely. I have tried my best to make it clear just how it unfolded within me, and how I came to the full realization of myself as God the Father. 

I tell you, there is no other God, no other being. God actually sent his sons into this world. He chose you in himself before the foundation of the world. 

You are here to perform a certain job; and when you do, you will say: “Father, I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. Now return unto me the glory that was mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was”. As a son, you radiate the glory of God; but when you return, you are that glory, you are that God. God the Father transforms his sons into himself by giving us his own son, who reveals our true identity. This is the mystery of life through death. 

There is a pattern in those 39 books of the Old Testament that fulfills itself in the New. Paul urges everyone to “Follow the pattern of the true word which you heard from me.” Here, he is telling you that his words are true, but he doesn’t spell them out. He makes the statement: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood,” but he doesn’t tell the experience. 

Paul was the first to use the word “Christ” which is the word “messiah” and means “God has touched; made contact.” Descending upon a son in bodily form as a dove, God has contacted that son through the sense of touch. That contact is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in that act God seals his gift. In the Old Testament, God decreed David to be his son. 

And in the New Testament, David comes in the Spirit and reveals you as his father. This is the great secret that Judas betrayed. Having had the experiences, Judas betrayed the messianic secret and tells where Jesus might be found, and who he is. 

Jesus is in you as your breath of life. One day he will awaken, and as he rises in you, you rise. At that moment you are saved from this world of death and transformed into the God of all life. That is the story of Christianity. 

Don’t look for Christ to come on the outside. Hundreds of millions are waiting for him to come and change the world, but it is not going to change. It’s a world of educated darkness, a school; and you do not change a school into a home, and heaven is your home. One day you will graduate from this school and receive the gift of God himself. As this gift is given, you awaken to discover you are in the grave where you first laid yourself down to sleep. Then the pattern of the true words that you have heard from me will unfold in you. 

Paul tried to tie his experiences into the Old Testament, as he quoted the 39 books one after the other; but he didn’t expound on them. But, as Blake said: “That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.” Maybe Paul felt the same way. Why spell it out, when desire to understand will force you to search the scriptures and ask yourself why, what, where, and when. If you will ask yourself these questions, you will find their answers within you. 

I tell you: God literally became you that you may become God. And in becoming God the Father, you do not lose your individuality. You are not only a member of this wonderful body – sharing in the purpose end of all things – but you are the body, for you are its animating spirit. 

You are a member, yet the whole, for in God there is no division. And no one will be lost. Although the evangelists tell us how we are sinning and will be lost, it is not God’s will that one be lost, because God would be lost. You cannot say “I am” unless God is in you. You may be a moron, yet you still know that you are. You may not know who you are, where you are, or what you are; but you cannot stop knowing that you are. That awareness is God, and there is no other. 

Judas reveals the good news that God has wrought it. What courage one should take from this message. The evangelists are giving good advice tonight, telling everyone how to live, what to say and how to act. But the gospels give us the good news of salvation, telling us that God actually became his sons in order to transform them into himself, that they may rise as God the Father! 

Not all of the sons came out. In the story of the prodigal son, we are told that the one who remained complained. He thought he didn’t have anything – yet he had it all. You may own the world, but if you do not know it, you can die of starvation for the want of food. A bank can be holding a billion dollars of yours, but if you do not know it you will not write a check. But when you become aware of who you really are, you will know that the whole is yours. Then you will say: “I and my Father are one, and all mine are thine and thine are mine.” 

After the great resurrection, you will play the part of Judas, and tell everyone who comes into your world who the messiah is and where Jesus might be found. I can’t tell you my thrill when I receive letters from you containing scriptural experiences you have had. I received a letter from a young lady who is still in school. She is majoring in music as she wants to be a composer. In her letter she said: “I have a dear friend who was having a birthday and I wanted to give him something special. It didn’t have to be material, it could be something I said or did that he would be proud of. I fell asleep dwelling on this, when I awoke at 2:00 a.m. with a vivid memory of this dream. I was sitting on my bed with my mother and father standing near. My father handed me three records saying: ‘Keep two and give him the third. He will love it and never tire of listening to it.’ Then I held a sheet of music containing the notes from which the record was made. I saw that the composition’s title was ‘Christ’, and the composer’s name was “Olam”.

She saw correctly. The word “Olam” means “something hidden; kept out of sight; a lad; a youth; a stripling,” and is translated “eternity” in the statement, “God has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done until the end.” 

When your journey comes to its end you will find that eternal youth who is God’s son, David. He is Olam, the eternal youth, the composer of the music – which is all about himself; for he is the Christ of scripture. Jesus – the Lord, and Christ – his son, are in you. Separate the two. Christ is not a title given Jesus, but his power and wisdom, which came out into the world to do his will. Jesus is the Savior, of which there is only one. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior.” Here is a young girl, still in school, who has found Christ, the composer, and the composition. 

You can’t exhaust the subject of Christ, but man is forever misunderstanding it. The crowds believe some little man was crucified on a cross by Jews, but John tells us: “You know not whom you worship, but we know who we worship, for salvation is from the Jews.” If you think of a physical Jew you are in error. A Jew is an Israelite who is not a descendant of Abraham after the flesh, but the elect of God of any race or nation. The Old Testament is the Book of the Jews, of which you – as the son of God – came into this world to fulfill. Every mystical experience, if foreshadowed by a word in the Old Testament, is predestined, written by God’s servants – the prophets. 

The chronological order of both the Old and the New Testament is not accurate. Matthew is the first book in our New Testament, yet Mark came before Matthew; and the letters of Paul came before the four gospels. Our forefathers of the church arranged the books as they now appear, but they do not give the true order of the unfolding picture any more than the books in the Old Testament do. Paul found the pattern unfolding in him and shared his experiences. In his second letter to Timothy, he urged him not to deviate from “my gospel,” but he did not spell it out. I have told you the chronological order just as it happened to me. 

The crucifixion begins the journey into time. Coming out from the Father, you came into the world by being crucified on humanity. As Paul said: “I know only Christ and him crucified.” But the drama of redemption begins with your resurrection from humanity and your spiritual birth. Then you will discover the Fatherhood of God through your son, David (who is Christ) calling you father. This is the gift God gave himself through his sons – the gift of fatherhood. 

One day you will know this truth by the betrayal of the great secret of the messiah. Judas not only reveals the great secret, but tells you where to find Jesus. He is in the garden as the tree of life. Blake knew. That is why he said, “The gods of the earth and sea sought through nature to find that tree. But their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain.” One day that tree – whose roots are in your brain – will reverse itself, and the story of Jesus and his Christ will unfold in you. 

You and I were sons of God before we entered these garments of death. When we return, we will have added to God the Father, yet remained individualized. I can’t tell you the joy, the ecstasy that is in store for you on your return, for you came out from the Father and came into the world. Now you will leave the world and return to the Father, as the Father. 

So, God’s gift to you is Christ, who is his son, David. And Christ’s gift is the spirit of truth which unfolds to reveal your true identity. As the son, you have come into the world to do the will of him who sent you. And in the end you will discover you sent yourself, for you will have found David, the son of Jesse (I AM) – one after your own heart who does all your will. Asleep, the messiah does the will of the Father; but when he awakes, the messiah and the Father are one. 

We came out from the world of life to enter the world of death in a grand experiment, not knowing if we would succeed. He chose us – in him – for the experiment, then made us victorious over death by giving us himself, that we may know we are God the Father. I am speaking from experience. I am not theorizing or speculating. Jesus is in you as your own wonderful human imagination. When you say, “I am,” that is Jesus. One day your awareness will awaken and rise. Then everything said of the Lord in the Old Testament will be fulfilled in you. And from that moment on your adventure will be over, and you will walk conscious of being God the Father. 

What a glorious concept. God actually gave himself to everyone for a grand experiment which cannot fail in any one, not even a Hitler or Stalin. No monster can fail, because the resurrection is now a fact. It has been proven so. Everyone will return – not as the son of God (which is glorious enough) but of God himself. That is my message to you. And it is true. 

I want to thank this sweet young lady for sharing her experience with me, that I may share it with you. Desiring to express herself in a loving way towards one she respects, she sees her parents – the symbol of her creative power – enter her room. Her father tells her of three records – were there not three who stood before Abraham when the birth of the child was announced? They were called men, not records, but it is the same symbolism. She was told to keep two and give him the other, as he would love it so and never tire of listening to it. The music was composed by Olam, the eternal youth and its title was Christ. Here is the composer writing about himself, just as man does here. 

Every book you read is a man’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, in the written form. He had to acquire the ability to write, and anyone can do that. Go to school, apply yourself, and master the technique of writing. Then, as you start to write, you will discover you can only write the thoughts that permeate your own mind. You may think you are detached from your thoughts; but you and your thoughts are one, so you are writing all about yourself. So, Olam – the eternal youth – composed the composition “Christ,” which is all about himself; and you, O Christ, will never tire of listening to your incredible story. 

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—10/03/1969

The book of Genesis is made up of three records, called the J, P, and E manuscripts. Tonight I will refer to the E manuscript, which begins with the 15th chapter of Genesis: “As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know for a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. They will be slaves there and they will be oppressed for four hundred years. After that they will come out with great possessions.’

“Abraham believed and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.” 

Here we discover that it is not what man is, but what he trusts God to do, that saves him. Believing that God the Father has prepared the way for his banished sons to return, in the state of faith you accepted the verdict that you would be enslaved for four hundred years.

Now when you read this statement you may think in terms of time as we know it, but that is not part of the mystery. In the Hebrew alphabet each letter has a numerical – as well as a symbolic – value. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is “taf. Its numerical value is four hundred, and its symbolic value is that of a cross. That cross is the body you wear. It doesn’t mean that it will take four hundred years for you to reach the end of the journey, but that a way has been prepared to bring you out of this journey into death.

Everything begins, waxes, wanes, and dies here; but God has prepared a way for us – his banished sons – to return to him, and when we do we will have great possessions. These possessions will not be of an earthly nature, for everything dissolves here. 

In this world your possessions enslave you. Buy a home, and the minute you have the feeling of possession you must insure your property against all the elements. Buy a large diamond of which you are so proud, and you must insure it and pay for that insurance the rest of your days. 

People who own a fortune in diamonds often place them in a vault and never see them, yet pay insurance on them year after year – but they have the feeling of possession. So you see: regardless of how great you determine your earthly possessions to be, you cannot take them with you. So what is the great possession that you will return with? Life in yourself!

The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of experiences which take place in the New. And even that which is recorded in the New is not conclusive and vivid. So we search the scriptures to see what we must experience in order to acquire our promised great possession.

You and I preexisted, for there is only God. Diversifying himself into the many by falling into a deep sleep, God the Father is now bearing his cross by wearing our garments of flesh and blood and dreaming our life into being. In this world we do not recognize ourselves in the other, for – wearing a mask – we are hidden from view. Now an animated body, we are destined to be gathered one by one and brought back into that original state with great possessions. That great possession is to have life in ourselves!

The word “Zechariah” means “Jehovah remembers,” and Zechariah’s book is all about remembering. In the 8th chapter the Lord speaks, saying: “I will return to Zion and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.”

When you begin to awaken, you will remember what you were told before that the world was, and memory will return in the form of an experience. When your dream of life comes to an end, a sound – a certain note – will call you from the tomb, and you will awaken in your skull and begin to remember God’s plan for your salvation. Zechariah’s prophecy will be fulfilled in you as you remember, for Zechariah describes Jerusalem in vivid imagery as it will be when city and temple are restored, and we – the exiled – have returned.

The night my awakening began I fell asleep in my normal, natural way. Then a dream possessed me and I found myself in a glorious city, with no buildings more than 3-4 stories high. The sidewalks – wider than any street I have ever seen – were filled with laughing, healthy boys and girls. There were concert grand pianos on the sidewalk at space intervals so that one would not interfere with the other. An artist would appear and play, just for the joy of those who were present, and each artist had his own following.

I sat at one grand piano and watched an enormous crowd follow their hero as he approached my bench. When he arrived I rose, he thanked me, sat down and began to play. As he played, his music formed geometrical patterns, all in color. Standing next to him, I knew that if I arrested a certain imaginal activity in me, I would have frozen music to contemplate.

I arrested this activity, the music froze, and the sustained note began to increase in volume. As its sound penetrated my very being, I awoke to find myself – not on my bed in my home, but in the holy sepulcher – my skull – where I had been throughout the centuries. Then I innately knew how to get out. I did it and found myself surrounded by all of the imagery of scripture concerning the birth of God.

It took three and one half years for that pattern to unfold in me; but when it was complete I knew beyond all doubt that I was the one scripture called Jesus Christ. Everyone is God incarnate. You may be unknown, unwanted, and shunned by the world; but you really are God, wearing your cross as you swore to yourself that you would.

Now listen to these words: “Marvel not at this; for those who are in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth.” You may think the tomb spoken of here is a cemetery or graveyard; but I tell you: the tomb in which you are buried is your skull. Your own wonderful human imagination is the God of the earth and sea who is buried in your skull. That is the holy sepulcher. So don’t go to Egypt or the Near East, to what is called the Holy Land, to find the place where God is buried, for he is not there. God is buried in your skull and it is from that skull that he will rise.

No one knows when the power that you really are will awaken and rise from sleep; but I do know that when it does you will have the power to stop the world, to examine it, and start it again at will. And no matter how long you arrest it, when released there will be no knowledge of the arrest, for there will be no change. Space is a facility for experience; but time is a facility for changes in experience, and when you arrest time you arrest change. If you stopped this moment in time and kept it so for a thousand years, nothing would age because nothing could change. Time is within you and you can arrest it just as I did the night I sustained the tone.

Now, the word translated “voice” in scripture, means “noise; sound; the trumpet; reverberation.” A reverberation sustained – like a storm wind – will awaken you from the dream of life, and you will see the world as it really is, for the world is not as your senses and reason belie. You will awaken to say within yourself: “I and the Father are one.” And if you are one with the Father, who has a son, you must find him. Five months later your son – who is God’s son, David – will reveal you to yourself. I know this doesn’t make sense, but what I am telling you is true and you will know this truth through experience.

In the world, you are oppressed and a slave to the body you wear. No matter how rich or powerful you may be here, you cannot command a servant to eat your food, assimilate it, and eliminate it for you. You must perform all the normal functions of your cross of flesh and blood yourself; therefore, are you not a slave to it? 

No one has ever been so wise or powerful that he could forego these functions. If he ever tried, he would die and they would bury him; but the real grave where God is buried is in your skull. There he will remain until the end of the journey when you are awakened from the dream and come out of your skull as the dreamer.

Although banished, God has prepared a way for you, his son, to return. We are all God’s sons, who collectively form the Father; but we are called back one by one. Each one of us is so unique we cannot be called in pairs or groups. And the night you are called will begin with a dream, as described in the 8th chapter of Zechariah.

I, who have told you what to expect, will physically disappear; but I will send the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth. He will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Having proclaimed to you that I am the truth, who can I send but myself? So God Himself entered death’s door with we who entered. He lay down in the grave with us in visions of eternity, until we awake to see the linen clothes lying there that the females have woven for us. 

Your mother wove your garment of flesh and blood called the linen cloth, and one day you will come out of it, never to return. You, an invisible being, will feel and hear a power so great it will sound like a storm wind. What I saw was conjured by and supported by a tone; therefore if the tone stopped, the beauty I contemplated would vanish. But the tone continued, and as it did I awoke.

There is a tone in you that is unique to you, and one day it will appear in the form of a beautiful pattern. You will arrest that tone, and as it is sustained the shell in which you have been sealed for unnumbered centuries will crack. You did not begin in your mother’s womb and you will not end in the grave. You are an immortal being who came down into a world of death to dream the dream of life. One day you will fulfill the 8th chapter of Zechariah and awaken to discover you are life itself.

Now the word, “Jesus” means “Jehovah saves,” and when Jesus is born Jehovah is born. So when you come out of the shell in which you placed yourself, you are saved.

Today with all of our knowledge we still do not know how a sperm can penetrate the surface of an egg and make that which is inside come forth in the likeness of the one who penetrated it, for all things bring forth after their kind. Now if God is bringing forth that which is after his kind, it has to be God who is born. 

Having entered the skull (your sealed egg) you have been dreaming your flesh and blood life into being. You have made a journey into death, and when the journey is over God will penetrate your skull, and you – completely individualized – will come forth as God. And so that you will have no doubt as to who you are, God’s only begotten son will call you Father. Only then will your journey be over.

Last night I retired, dwelling on this father/son relationship, and awoke about 2:30 A.M. to find myself in a place much like the Plaza Hotel in New York City. I had just checked out, and turned to see my brother, Fred checking in. As I went over to greet him I saw my nephew, Philip – Fred’s son – approach. Then I did the strangest thing: I introduced Philip to Fred, and as they shook hands I realized they didn’t know one another. Fred knew I was his brother, and Philip knew me as his uncle, but the father/son relationship they did not remember.

Now let us turn to scripture: “Philip said, ‘Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied’ and he answered, ‘Have I been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.’ “I saw my flesh and blood brother and nephew, yet in my dream they were only symbols of the Father and the son who do not know each other.

Tonight I tell you that you are the father of God’s only begotten son, who is named David – but you do not know it. One day, however, you will, for David will stand before you and call you Father. Then this mutual understanding between father and son will be accomplished, and your journey into the world of death will be over.

In my dream I played the part of David as I brought my brother Fred and his son Philip together. The word “David” is defined in Strong’s Biblical Concordance as “beloved; the uncle; the father’s brother.” As David, I made the announcement; and yet I am the father of David, for I and my Father are one.

These are mysteries, not of things to be kept secret, but mysterious in nature. They confuse the rational mind, as it wants to think on the level of this secular world where a man fathers a child and that’s all there is to it. The rational mind cannot solve the mystery of scripture, for the Bible is not a record of secular history, but divine history – which is something entirely different. 

All the names recorded there are significant and tell a story that unfolds in the soul. You are the God whose name is I AM, but you are in this world and will bear the form of flesh and blood for an allotted time. Then the tree of life that you are will be split from top to bottom, and you – the Spirit trapped inside – will be set free.

In the meanwhile, dwell upon your great possession. If tonight you owned the earth and it vanished at your death, what would it matter? Stalin thought he controlled the world. He killed twenty million people then vanished. But Stalin did not die; he was restored to life in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in him. Stalin is a name God adopted in order to play that part, just as God adopted the name Hitler and thought he would rule Germany. 

They are all restored to life now, and adopted other names in order to continue the work that must be done in them; for in the end they, too, will be redeemed. Everyone will be redeemed because everyone is aware that he is, and therefore saying: “I am” – and that is the name of God. While playing their parts they were used, and although they do not know it they are God, moving towards their ultimate good.

Now, forget the individual and return to scripture, for you are only here to fulfill it. Even though I have completed the story as told in the New Testament, every night I find myself re-enacting the prophecy of the Old Testament. As I dwell upon a promise of the Old, the waves begin to break in my consciousness (as it did last night) and I am shown the perfect representation of the lack of memory of the father/son relationship. In the past my brother used to say: “Of my four children the one I do not understand is Philip.” They looked like each other but had nothing in common on physical level, and here on the spiritual level they did not know their physical relationship. I had to remind my brother of the relationship between Philip and Fred. He knew my brother Fred, but did not identify himself with the name.

Everything contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. There isn’t a dream that is insignificant, but we are past masters of their misinterpretation. We cannot see the story behind the story. But I tell you: you are here for one grand purpose and that is to awaken from the dream, and when you do you will have power in yourself. “As the Father has power in himself, so he has granted the son also to have power in himself. Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming when those who are in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth,” and as you come forth your power is exercised.

There is a note, a tone that will awaken you when the boys and girls play in the streets of the Jerusalem within you. Zion is within you and the Lord is within you, for the entire drama unfolds in the imagination. One day you will be so completely carried away with the beauty of something produced by a note that you will arrest it. That sustained note will cause you to awaken to the truth that you are the Christ of scripture, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Then you will know that you have returned with your great possession, for you will have transformed an animated body into a life-giving Spirit.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—04/12/1968

Easter Sunday is the day the world celebrates the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. I use the word “mystery” advisedly, for in the Book of Mark, Jesus turns to his disciples and says: “To you it has been given to know the mystery of God, but to those outside, everything is in parables.” (Mark 4) Here we see that the mystery of God is revealed from within, while the story of God is told as a parable to those on the outside. A parable is a story told as though it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character and learn its lesson. On Good Friday, possibly hundreds of millions of people will attend the three-hour service. An equal number – and maybe even a greater number – will go to Easter service on Sunday, not knowing they are worshiping a parable which must be experienced from within to be known.

Paul said: “Great indeed is the mystery of our religion.” This is not something to be kept as a secret, but is mysterious in character. Its mystery is not easily accepted. We are told in the Book of John that many followers could not accept his words. They left never to walk with him again. (John 6)

The Christian world celebrates Good Friday as the day Jesus died, yet scripture tells us this is not true. In the Book of Galatians, Paul states: “I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2) You could hang on the cross forever, and not experience the death of the Son of God. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, record his death as taking place when “He cried again with a loud voice and yielded his spirit. And behold the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and all the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23)

There are two sides to the coin of the Easter celebration. The yielding of the spirit, and the severance of the body of God. “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ who is within me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” God gives himself to you the moment the curtain is torn. Spirit fell from unity into diversity, into a world of generation and death. But when your spiritual body is split in two, spirit takes your individuality with him and once more ascends into unity and regeneration. This is the true story of Good Friday. The world, however, will not believe it. Looking on the outside, they hear the parable and believe it is a fact.

Now, as the disciples entered the tomb, a young man sitting at the right said: “You seek Jesus who was crucified? He has risen and is no longer here. See the place where they laid him.” This statement discloses the fact that Jesus has risen, as well as the place of the resurrection. But no effort is made to describe how he rose or when it happened. In these two statements we find a fantastic mystery, which I hope to unfold for you from experience. But first, I want to explain what I mean by calling those into my circle and teaching them from within.

This week I received two letters. In the first letter, the lady dreamed she was summoned to me, to discover others were there. Calling her and two others to me, I said: “I must die.” They were so delighted with the news, and as she turned to tell the others, she awoke. The following night, one of the friends in her dream found herself with two others, being taught a new language by me and making an effort to understand and learn from me. She awoke, wrote it down, and returned to sleep – to discover that now the three were linked together, as they attempted to speak the language. I was standing off to one side, helping whenever they needed it. Again she awoke and recorded the dream. And again she closed her eyes, re-entered the dream, to discover that now the three of them were one. I stood before them, called them forward, and said: “I must die to the flesh in order to live in you. From now on you will find me within.”

On this level these dreams are a parable, a story of the inner man, which – falling into diversity, is separate, linked together in the search for the cause of all life, ultimately discovering the unity of all. It is true. It is necessary that I die, but I have already. On the 8th day of April, 1960, I died to all generation. My creative powers have now turned into regeneration and now, night after night, I beget on the higher level.

It is said, that as he cried the loudest, he yielded his spirit; and the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom, the rocks were split, and the earth shook. This is true. When my spiritual body was split, I felt every little vertebra of my spine separate. Then, like a serpent, I moved up into the Holy of Holies. This is how your creative power, called the Son of man, is lifted up. In his 12th chapter, John tells us: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I draw all men to me.” The evangelist who is telling the story added this remark: “He said this to show by what means he would die.” This is not true. He said this to disclose the kind of death that would be his. 

Only by yielding the spirit, can you die and ascend into a new being. You must draw yourself into yourself, otherwise you will hang on the cross forever. 

Everyone is hanging on the cross, manifesting the flesh. Having been crucified with Christ, it is not the flesh which lives, but Christ, who lives in a fleshly garment. The life you now live in the flesh you live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you. I remember the moment I cried out – splitting the curtain, and finding myself part of that pool of golden, liquid light at the base of my spine. Then I moved up into the Holy of Holies.

One man fell into diversity. Now asleep, he sees millions of others and does not realize they are himself pushed out. The lady saw three others, separate and individualized, then linked together, and finally one. Well, multiply three a million times, and you will see multitudes, all separate. Then the linking, the meshing, the weaving, of one thought into another; and finally the unity of all.

These marvelous experiences did not take place on this level; and if you try to interpret them as something that will happen here, you go amiss. When you meet me at night, it is because you have conjured me out of the depths of your own being. I am always with you, but not on this level. I died in 1960, and from that day on I have revealed the secrets of God from within.

We are all on this cross, but we have not died, for only God dies. It is God who is speaking in William Blake’s beautiful statement: “Unless I die thou cans’t not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me. Would thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And if God dieth not for Man and gives himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” So God dies, and everyone who is raised becomes one with him. You know me as a person, but I am one with God, so in that sense I died. I have to die to the flesh in order to lie in you. From now on you will find me within, not without.

The parable the Christian world will celebrate on Easter Sunday belongs to this level, but its meaning is within. Walking with you on the outside, I eat and drink and do all the normal things of life here. If you ask anything of me, I will do it for you. But when you meet me in the depth of your own being, I will be teaching the spirit.

Good Friday and Easter are two great mysteries. Good Friday comes first in the parable, but scripture tells us that the first is last, and the last is first. This is true, for the resurrection, which we celebrate on Sunday, is the first of the great events.

In fact, two events take place that very moment: the awakening within and the departure of your spiritual body from the tomb. “In a moment, in the twinkle of an eye, at the last trumpet all will be changed into the imperishable one.” This is the great eschatological trumpet of the 27th chapter of Isaiah. When this great trumpet sounds, all those who entered the land of Egypt will be called back to worship in Jerusalem. The word “trumpet” means “reverberation.” There is a peculiar reverberation that takes place. You feel as though every bone in your skull is breaking but instead, you awaken within yourself, come out to leave your tomb empty. That is your spiritual birth!

The Easter story begins with the resurrection. God is buried in you and this is the story of his seed. “Unless a seed falls into the earth and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it brings forth much.” Here is the story of life through death. God dies for your salvation. His death is your redemption. He was with you from the beginning, experiencing all of your pain and joy. But when he gives up this world the curtain is split, and as he is lifted up he takes himself – now individualized – with him. That is your ascension. Now, the resurrection is not the ascension. Your resurrection and birth from above come first. This is followed by the ascension nine months later. 
To the Christian world this is only a parable, for they have not stirred themselves to question it. And not everyone who hears the truth will believe it, because they have not been called to hear it – and that goes from the Pope down. 

No matter what name man calls himself, or what robes he clothes himself in, he is sound asleep. Anyone who believes in a man who lived two thousand years ago, thinks things happen on the outside, and has no desire to question the meaning behind the parable. But one day, a man will know from experience that everything is taking place within. That the world is but a mirror, reflecting that which is within. So her vision was perfect. It started with separation, then – linking together – it ended with unification.

I have told you the great mystery of the crucifixion. Every child born of woman has been crucified with Christ. But only when his spiritual body is split, does Christ die to the flesh. Today I read the work of a brilliant scholar who stated he thought it was merciful that Jesus only had to suffer three hours. Here is a man who knows his Greek, Latin, and Hebrew backwards, but cannot see the mystery behind the parable. He added the thought that they did not break his bones because scripture had to be fulfilled, yet he hasn’t the slightest concept as to what that means. Bones represent the law of God which cannot be broken by man. It is the law of the identical harvest. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the promise, but those who worship the parable think the bones of his feet were not broken so that scripture may be fulfilled.

God’s law was established in the beginning, as everything must bear fruit after its own kind. If it’s a pear tree, it bears pears; a plum tree bears plums, and an apple tree, apples. Bones represent the law of identical harvest. Assuming you are known or unknown, wanted or unwanted, wealthy or poor, your assumption is your seed and because of God’s law you will bring forth that which you have assumed you are. So when Jesus Christ had risen, the curtain had been torn and he had left this sphere. But having left this law behind, they could not break his bones.

A great scholar sees everything on the outside and therefore speaks of a parable. But you have been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. Not everyone will receive it, so it is offered to more than can accept it. There will always be a remnant, however, who will understand and believe; and that is how we go up.

In the lady’s vision, she saw how protean I am. First there were three, then linked together they became one. In that same way I am part of your being, always speaking to you from within. And when you see me in vision, I will not be talking about this visible garment I wear, or when I will depart from it, for no one knows the hour or the day. When asked: “Teach us the number of our days,” no reply was given (Psalm 39). If anyone tries to tell you they know when you will depart, do not believe them.

It is my desire that everyone will soon celebrate the splitting of the spiritual temple and move into an entirely different world to exercise a power of which mortal man knows not of. I can’t explain this power, but it is in my head. I can move mountains by simply exercising it as this power is my very being. Hearing it in my head, I control it there. My five senses have synthesized into a power so great I can do anything, and as I exercise this power it grows and grows and grows. It has been eight years since God died, and since that time I have grown in power, grown in wisdom, and expanded in the bosom of God. It is my prayer that you will know it, too.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—01/22/1968

When you hear the word “gospel” you usually think in terms of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but tonight I want to introduce you to the gospel as found in the letters of Paul.

Listen to these words carefully: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel, not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or any who hear him, should preach a gospel that is contradictory to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Then he repeats this saying: “I have said before so now I say again. If anyone teaches a gospel that is contrary to the gospel we preach, let him be accursed.” You will notice that Paul includes himself in that statement, because it is possible under the threat of death or pain or torture for man to confess that he was wrong. (The churches made Galileo confess, under the threat of Cain, that the earth was stationary and not moving around the sun, even though today we know Galileo was right.)

The churches still teach a Christ that never existed, but Paul taught what he had received through revelation, saying: “Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. I will have you know that this gospel, which I preach is not man’s gospel. I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Then he tells us who Jesus Christ is, saying: “From now on I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.”

Now, the word “Christ” and “Messiah” are the same in scripture. Confessing “I am a child of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin,” Paul was a master in the law of Israel. Looking for some physical descendant of Jehovah to come as a messiah and destroy the enemies of Israel, the mystery unfolded in him, and he said: “I want you to know how greatly I strive for you that you will have an assured understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

To Paul, the wisdom and power and knowledge of God which suddenly erupted in him was Christ, for when the visions came he understood who the messiah really was. Paul realized that God, called “the Word”, was buried in man and had three stages to its history: its planting, its death, and its resurrection. First the Word is sown (or imparted). Entering the world of death, it is forgotten in the struggle for food and clothing, rent and taxes. Then the Word is heard with understanding, quickened, and as it erupts all the promises of God to Abraham unfold from within the individual. When it erupts in you, you will no longer search for a physical Christ, for you will know Christ as the wisdom and power of God in you! Like Paul, you will then say: “I no longer regard anyone from the human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view I regard him thus no longer.” Knowing that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, you discover who can!

Paul, speaking to the Thessalonians, said: “When you received the Word of God that we preach to you, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it really is, the Word of God that works in you, the believers.” In this statement Paul is speaking to those who hear God’s eternal story and believe it. They are the ones who, when the world calls their dear ones dead, persist in believing they are not dead but alive, and that God will fulfill his promise in them. They believe, not in the words of men, but in the Word of God buried within.

Now, here is a story I received last Friday night. This will illustrate how you will know when the Word is quickened in you. This lady found herself, in dream, in a huge crowd, seated on a grassy hillside. A man was standing on a small, raised platform speaking into a microphone. In his hands he held an open Bible. Then a gentleman stood up and said: “I challenge anyone to disprove my knowledge of the Bible.” (This lady, in keeping with the character that she really is – and she certainly is not lukewarm in anything that she does) rose, and quoting the 22nd chapter of the Book of Matthew, the 42nd, 43rd, and 45th verses (she omitted the 44th verse which is a quote from the 110th Psalm) said: “Question, please! What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? They answered, ‘The son of David’ Then he said to them, ‘Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord how can he be David’s son?'” Completing the quote, she continued to explain to the crowd the relationship between Christ and David, saying: “Christ is the Father and David the Son in fulfillment of scripture.” Then in the dead silence that followed the statement, she awoke. The Word has become so quickened in her that it is only a matter of moments before it will erupt and the story of Jesus Christ will be her story.

No individual called Jesus Christ was ever crucified on a wooden cross. When Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ” he was speaking of the Cosmic Christ who is crucified on humanity that humanity may become a living soul. It’s the wisdom of God and the power of God that is crucified, died, and is buried in you. And it is that same power and wisdom which awakens to reveal you as God’s power and wisdom.

In the state of Paul you, too, will say: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” You may think a person is speaking but it is God himself, who so loved you he gave you his power and wisdom called Christ, that in time you would awaken to the realization that you are God.

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he asks this question: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” Now I am going to ask you: Are you going to think of a physical man called Jesus Christ? An external savior who will come through the loins of the descendants of David? Or are you going to think of the Christ-Spirit that is buried in you when I speak of the Christ? Will you accept the idea that the Spirit of Christ is crucified on you and buried in you? Will rise in you as you? Or are you going to continue to see a physical being called Christ as God’s power and wisdom?

Paul confesses: “I did not receive this from men, nor was I taught it by man. It came through a revelation of Jesus Christ, which is God in the act of self-revelation!” Then he continues, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me I did not confer with flesh and blood.” How could you ask another to explain a revelation, which came from within you? They could tell you all kinds of things about the outside, but they cannot tell you a thing about this great mystery until it has unfolded in them. In the 2nd chapter of Colossians Paul says: “I want you to have the assured understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.” He tells you Christ is a mystery, as all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge of God are hid in him.

Christ was never a single little man who walked the earth. The Christ-Spirit, God’s very own power and wisdom, is crucified and buried in you, and one day that power will rise in you and you will know that you are He. “Let any one who teaches another gospel be accursed.” Well, the whole vast world teaches another gospel. They tell you that a little man was physically born from the womb of a woman who was spiritually impregnated, and that’s not the story at all! Everyone will give birth to Christ! This will be a sign unto you when you hold that babe in your own arms, for at that moment you will be holding the sign of your birth into life itself!

Let me share with you a vision of George Russell (known to us all as AE) from his book, The Candle of Vision, which he begins by quoting from Proverbs and Job, saying: “The Spirit of man is that candle of the Lord and when his candle shines upon my head, by its light I walk through darkness.” His vision begins: “Where I saw this I will not say. There was a hall vaster than any cathedral, with pillars that seemed built out of living and trembling opal. High between the pillars were thrones upon which sat Divine Kings, all fire-crested. One wore the crest of the serpent, another plumed with feathers of flame. At the end of the hall sat one greater than the rest who radiated light as the sun. Below on the floor lay a dark figure, and two of the Divine Kings made motions with their hands above it over head and body. Where their hands waved, sparkles of fire like flashing jewels broke out. Then out of this body rose a being as tall, as glorious and majestic as those seated on the thrones. As he woke to the hall and became aware of his brothers, he lifted up his hands in greeting, and the tall golden figures leaped up from their thrones, raised their hands in greeting, and quickly faded into the light where the great one sat.” AE had eavesdropped upon a god who was awakening from his passage through darkness into light.

Now so entranced in this world, you have forgotten that vast hall where you laid yourself down to dream this world into being; but one day you too will awaken, and your brothers, all vested kings, will be there to greet you. One by one everyone will awaken in that same manner to be incorporated into that single body which was at the end, waiting for the return of all.

You and I agreed to dream in concert and this world is our dream. It is a world of darkness, a world that is a nightmare, but in the end you too will return enriched by the dream. You will awaken to find yourself glorified by it, glorious and majestic because of your experience in this world of darkness, this world of death.

Now, another lady gave me a letter on Friday, saying: “I have been having the strangest thing happening to me. I have been having double vision. While in my living room doing the normal housewife chores I see a roadway there, bathed in living light, with a light of greater intensity at its end. All day long the two worlds converged to remain with me, yet one world did not seem to disturb the other.

“The first night of the double vision, as I lay down to sleep I saw a tall being robed in white. He was so magnificent I felt that I must be at his feet, yet I knew I was on my bed. Standing erect with his arms raised above his head, I see he is holding a lamp which illuminates everything round about him. Then I am looking through his eyes and seeing my husband sleeping on the bed. Suddenly I realized that I am the being having the experience and the one who is conveying it.” Then she asked this question: “Could I be this glorious being I saw?”

May I say to her: You are infinitely greater than you think you are, for you are the being looking through the eye and the one stretched out on the bed called your husband, as you are the invisible cause of all! You are awake, really home, and it’s only a matter of moments before you will be completely awake from this dream of life. Oh, you will have many fantastic experiences, which may frighten your friends and disturb relatives, but you cannot help it, for you have arrived.

Now, Paul wrote his Gospel to the Galatians before 52 AD. All of his letters were written before the four gospels came into existence. Mark, the earliest gospel, was written in the year 70 A.D. and John, the last, was written in 90 A.D. Read the Book of John and you will see that it has drawn heavily on the story of Paul. All of the promises of God awoke in Paul. Telling the story as it unfolded in him, he said: “Anyone who tells another gospel, let him be accursed.” Any other gospel destroys the truth and keeps men as slaves. Even today, after 2,000 years, men are still led astray by being taught the historicity of Christ, for it is a mystery.

When Paul read the Old Testament without its revelation, he believed that Abraham was a being of flesh and blood. In the Book of Galatians he tells the story of Abraham and his two wives: Hagar, who bears children into slavery, and Sarah, who bears children into freedom. Then he said: “This is an allegory.” Now, an allegory is a story that is told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character and extract its meaning. If the story of Abraham as stated in the 4th chapter of Galatians is an allegory, and the New Testament begins: “This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” – is the story of Jesus Christ not an allegory, written for us to learn its message? This doesn’t mean the story is a lie, but because man cannot grasp the mystery of God, it is told in the form of a tale. Unfortunately, man has accepted the story instead of its message. The story of Jesus is an allegory, yet it is truer than anything known to man, for the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God, who wrote the story.

In 1929 at the age of twenty-four, I stood in the presence of the Risen Lord, and when he asked me a simple question I answered in the words of Paul: “Faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” When I came back to this world I must confess I wondered why I used the words of Paul rather than one of the evangelists. I am not saying that which is recorded in the four gospels is not true. It is all true, but the experiences recorded there were built from this original gospel, and any teaching contrary to it is a lie. There is no historical Jesus Christ. There never was one and there never will be.

Paul was looking for the Messiah to come from the outside, and when he came from within, Paul was honest enough to record what happened to him, and for that he was condemned by the Sanhedrin, his own earthly brothers. They imprisoned him, chained him, and wanted his death because he dared to bring a translation of the prophecies of God that differed from what they expected.

They wanted an external Messiah, but Christ does not come that way. He awakens from within, for it is He who is playing all the parts. So the Word, having been received by man, awakens to discover himself! It has been him all along, and when he returns from his passage through darkness into the heavenly guild, all of his kingly brothers will be waiting for him. Arriving there, he will contribute to the wisdom and the power and the glory of God, for everyone returns with his gift!

Read Paul’s thirteen letters carefully and you will realize that the system of the Christian faith was fully matured before Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John came into existence. Paul calls his system the Gospel of God, the message of salvation.

Having fulfilled scripture, I know that everything said there is non-historical and yet true. One story is told of the feeding of the five thousand. Calling himself the bread of life that came down from heaven and referred to as the great fish, he tells us all that we must eat his body and drink his blood, so in this story the five thousand are spiritually fed. This is my experience of that story.

In the year 1946 I was sailing through the Caribbean toward Mobile, Alabama, when suddenly I was lifted up on high in one spiral motion. As I rose, a heavenly chorus began to sing over and over again: “Neville is Risen” and I felt as though I had been encased in a conflict with death and I was its victor. Clothed in a body of fire, I was a fiery being dwelling in a body of air. Before my eyes I could see an infinite seat of human imperfection and I knew they were waiting for me. Knowing that if I be lifted up to a state of perfection, I lift all men unto me, I glide by them completely undisturbed and unconcerned. And as I do, each and every person was made perfect, as missing members of their bodies appeared out of the nowhere and remolded themselves into the bodies. All this time the heavenly chorus accompanied me, singing: “Neville is Risen.” When everyone was made perfect the chorus exulted: “It is finished,” and then – for the first time since I left eternity – I knew the cramped stage of being here, for at that moment I felt myself come down and condense once more into the straightjacket of this body on the bunk of a freighter coming into Mobile, Alabama.

In that vivid experience I fed the thousands – not a little bread, but myself. Having conquered death, I was perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect, and I fed them what they wanted. The one who wanted the eye got it, he who wanted that arm got the arm. Whatever they wanted they got in its fullness, and when everyone was made perfect the chorus exulted: “It is finished,” and I was crystallized into this little thing called Neville, where I have remained since 1946. Now I know what is in store for me when I break the bonds of this straightjacket and return to the heavenly guild, as I know my brothers are waiting for my return from this journey through darkness into light.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—03/07/1969

The game of life, like every game, is played within the framework of certain rules, and any violation of those rules carries a penalty. You and I are playing this game from morning to night, and should therefore learn its rules in order to play it well.

Ecclesiastes gives us this rule: “Even in your thought do not curse the king, or in your bed chamber curse the rich, for a bird will carry your voice or some winged creature tell the matter.” And Mark gives us another, as: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will.” If you must believe you have received your desire in order to attain it, then you must start your game by believing it is finished. You must feel yourself into and partaking of your goal. And you must persist in that feeling in order to achieve it.

Now, another rule is said in this manner: “Cast your bread upon the water and you will find it after many days.” In other words, do not be concerned as to how it is going to happen – just do it. This statement hasn’t a thing to do with doing good as the world defines the word. Jesus was a carpenter. The word means one who produces from seed – as a flower, a tree, the earth.

The prophecy of the Old Testament is the seed which a carpenter called Jesus brings to birth. He comes not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them.
The word, ‘bread’ in the statement: “Cast your bread upon the waters,” means to devour; to consume. Water is a euphemism for semen, that living water which carries the sperm of man. The creative act is psychological, not physical; yet the intentions are the same. You must cast your bread upon the waters with passion! You must be consumed with the desire and literally on fire with love for its possession, for an intense imaginal act will always draw unto itself its own affinity.

Winston Churchill departed this world a very successful man; however, during his life he had many failures. Then one day he made this discovery, which changed his life. These are his words: “The mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood.”

Let me put it this way: The game of life is won by those who compare their thoughts and feelings within to what appears on the outside. And the game is lost by those who do not recognize this law. Being consumed by anger, they see no change in their world. But if they would change their mood, their circumstances would change. Then they would recognize the law behind their world.

There are those who are depressed all day long and remain that way all of their life. I remember back in New York City, when I would see certain people walking in my direction I would want to cross the street, because I did not want to hear their depressing stories. They would spend hours telling about their wife or husband, their children or grandchildren, and each story geared to depression. Never changing their mood, their world never changed. Seeing no change, they would not recognize a law between the inner world they maintain and the outer world of response.

But if you apply this law you can predict your future. Feel a new mood rise within you. Sustain it and soon you will meet people who embody this new state. Even inanimate objects are under the sway of these affinities. In a certain mood I have gone to my library and removed a book I have not touched in years. And when I casually open it, I find confirmation of my mood. A table, though remaining the same, will be seen differently based upon your momentary mood, for everything reflects it. It is your mood which decides your fortune, not your fortune that decides your mood. People feeling poor attract poverty, not knowing that if they felt rich they would attract wealth.

In the Book of Proverbs, it is said: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” Now, the lamp of the Lord is the light of the world. We contain that light; and nature – the genie – is our slave, fashioning the world as our mood dictates. By nature I mean all of humanity – the animal, plant, and mineral world. In fact, everything that appears on the outside is a slave of this lamp. Fashioned from within, this slave will fashion your world to reflect your thoughts; and no power can stop their fulfillment.
Become aware of what you are thinking, and you will recognize a law between your mood and your surrounding circumstances. Then you will predict with certainty, because you know certain events – being in harmony with your mood – must appear. Everything – whether a living being or an inanimate object such as a book – must appear to bear witness to your mood.

Now, in order to play the game of life, you must know what you want to replace what you have. When you know what it is, you must assume the feeling that you have it. Although your reason and senses will deny its existence, persistence will cause your assumption to harden into fact and objectify itself upon your screen of space. Play the game this way. You may think it doesn’t work, but that’s because you have not tried it. You may believe the idea is stupid, but I tell you: the mood decides your fortune. Believe me, for I have proved this principle over and over again in my life.

It was Winston Churchill who galvanized the Western world by putting his words into practice. In spite of the horrors and bombing in London, Mr. Churchill sustained the mood of victory, and even in the darkest days he would not waver. Knowing the mood would externalize itself around the world, he sustained the mood – while his opponents, not knowing the law, put their trust in armies and machinery of war.

Mr. Churchill’s wonderful statement, recorded in the “New York Times,” has proved itself to me. By simply catching the mood I have changed the circumstances of my life. Now I teach others how to do it. I invite you to ask yourself how you would feel if your desire was now fulfilled. Toy with the thought. Play with it a while and the mood will come upon you. Keep that mood by playing with the senses it evokes, and watch your world change to match your new mood.

Let me tell you of a lady I know who, in her middle sixties, had nothing when she put this principle into practice. Every morning as she soaked in the tub prior to going to her $75 a week job, she would say to herself: “Something wonderful is happening to me now.” She kept playing upon the mood, toying with the feeling that something wonderful was happening. That very week she received her first breakthrough.

For thirty-odd years this lady had attended the opera, concerts, and Broadway shows, with an intimate friend. Every night they dined in some fabulous restaurant, but he had told her many times he would never give her any money. But he suddenly had a change of heart and signed over a one hundred thousand dollar trust fund to her, to be spent immediately as she so desired.

A short time later, she began to apply the law to a greater degree and he again set up another one hundred thousand dollar fund for her. Now, this lady – whose rent is $165 per month – can’t spend the income she receives from a two hundred thousand dollar fund, plus her social security; but she isn’t satisfied and wants more!

The old gentleman has a little hardening of the brain now and they have parted company. And, because he refuses to see her, she curses him, though we are warned: “Even in your thoughts do not curse the king, or in your bed chamber do not curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter.” This lady calls me every week to tell me she is overcoming the cursing. I hope so, because other things can come into her world if she continues to do so.

The law has its positive as well as its negative side. I am not here to judge how you use the law, but leave you to practice it as you will. If you are in the habit of thinking negatively, you are not going to sustain the thought that you are all you want to be. You may hold it for a few seconds, and if it does not prove itself instantly you may deny it. But in order to play the game of life you must know the rules and apply them. And remember: as in every game, there are rules whose violation causes failure. You cannot deceive yourself, for God is not mocked; as you sow, so shall you reap.

In the world you may get away with a violation that the referee did not see; but you cannot get away from the observer in you, for he and you are one. If you know what you did, then he knows, for your awareness and the father of your world are one. You cannot deceive yourself. You cannot mock yourself. God is going to record your every violation and mold your world in harmony with your feelings.

Let me now share a letter I received from a friend. In it he said: “Last Monday night a friend asked me for help, so that night I spent a half hour imagining I heard the words he would say if his desire were realized. Just before I awoke the next morning, the friend’s wife appeared in my dream and thanked me for my help.
“Then Tuesday evening, while enjoying some music in my living room, my friend appeared in reverie. Speaking with authority, power, and joy, he used the identical words I heard when I imagined him confirming the fulfillment of his desire, and I felt the thrill of completion.”

It is my hope that confirmation will come in the immediate present, and my friend will hear the man tell him in person of the fulfillment of that imaginal act which was set on fire by his friend. Now, in another part of his letter, my friend said: “In a dream I entered a hotel lobby, registered at the desk, and asked to be called at 7:00 o’clock the next morning. As I watched, the man marked a bold seven over my name on the card; then I awoke.”

This is a marvelous vision, as seven is the numerical value for spiritual perfection. It also has much to do with gestation and incubation. In the insect and animal world, I am told, that 280 days is a multiple of seven. We know that a hen’s egg, if properly incubated, takes 21 days – again a multiple of seven. Here we find birth has multiples of seven, but in his case it is incubation of spiritual perfection.

Another lady wrote, saying: “I saw myself lying in bed, ghastly pale as though dead. Suddenly a giant of a man rose out of my body.”

Let me tell you the story of a wonderful artist, who was also a mystic. His name was George Russell, but you know him best as A.E. He said: “I will tell this vision, but where it happened I will not say. It was a vast hall with the columns made of living opal as though the colors of dawn and evening had blended into something alive.
Between the columns were thrones upon which fire-crested kings were seated. One wore a crest of the dragon, another, plumes of fire. In the center a dark body was stretched out on the floor as though in a deep trance. At the far end of the hall, on a throne higher than the others, sat a being with the sun’s glory shining behind him.

As I watched, two crested kings rose, and stretching their hands over the body on the floor, sparks of light came out of them. Suddenly a figure as tall, as majestic as these fire-crested kings rose out of that dark body. Looking around, he recognized his kin and raised his hand in salutation. Then they leaped from their thrones, raised their hands in the same wonderful greeting and – like brothers – walked toward the end and disappeared into the sun.”

Each vision is a foreshadowing of what will take place. A.E. perceived him as coming from another, while this lady saw him as coming from her own being. They are both adumbrations of a wonderful event which will take place in everyone; for that crested king, who is the Son of God, is housed in all.

It does not matter whether the body be that of a woman or a man, or what the pigment of the skin may be; within each one of us is the Son of God, who – radiating his glory and bearing the express image of his person – is the great lamp of the Lord. And one day this majestic being will rise out of your garment of death, and you will enter the land of life.

But while we are here, let us learn the rules of the game of life and play it. Life itself is caused by the assemblage of mental states, which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. My friend mentally heard the words he would hear if his desire for his friend were fulfilled. Its assemblage, occurring within him, created the event to be played out in the game of life.

After you have assembled your mental state and allowed it to occur within you, you do not have to repeat the act. You cast your bread upon the water the moment you felt relief. Although you do not have a physical expression in a sexual manner, relief is possible; and of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. When someone you dearly love is late, you anxiously await that key in the door. And when you hear their voice, your relief is keenly felt. That is the same kind of relief you will have when you have imagined correctly.

If you find it necessary to recreate the act every day, you are not casting your bread upon the water. You may imagine over and over again, but you are only going to impregnate once; and if you reach the point of relief, your bread has been cast upon the water to return, perhaps in the matter of an hour. I have had the phone ring – minutes after I have imagined it – to hear confirmation that it has happened. Sometimes it has taken days, weeks, or months; but I do not repeat the action once I have done it and felt the feeling of relief, for I know there is nothing more I need to do.

Learn to consciously play this game of life, for you are unconsciously playing it every day. I am sure the millions who are on relief feel the government owes them a living; but there is no government, only we who pay taxes. The government has no money and can only give what it takes from our pockets. Those on relief are complaining, claiming they are not getting enough out of our pockets, and that mood persists throughout their day.

Their mood never varies, so they see no change and recognize no law between the mood they are sustaining and the outer world they dislike. If they were told that their mood was causing the phenomena of their life, they would deny it. No one wants to feel that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life, yet there is no other cause. God is the only cause and he is man’s own wonderful human imagination.

When I speak of imagination I am referring to God in you, of which there are two sides: imagining and contacting. Contacts are what imagining is all about. When you imagine, you contact a feeling, and the feeling you imagine, you create. You are the same God who created the world and all within it, but while you are clothed in a garment of flesh and blood your power is keyed low.

I do hope you understand the rules to the game of life; and – because there is a positive as well as a negative rule – I urge you not to curse anyone. Ecclesiastes used the words ‘king’ and ‘rich’ because they are the ones most often envied. A person need not be a millionaire, however, to be envied. He could simply be a little bit better off than another. Someone could live in a better neighborhood, pay more rent, maybe even go to a better restaurant, or buy better clothes, to be envied. So we are warned not to curse the king or the rich in our thoughts, for they cannot be concealed, as all thoughts are completely one; and by a law divine they mingle in one another’s being.

Awareness seems to be scattered, as everyone on the outside is aware. But no one needs ask another to aid in the change of his world if he changes it on the inside. If another is necessary to bring about the change, he will – with or without his consent. You do not have to single out the individual to play the part in bringing about the change you have imagined. He will play his part if necessary because we all intermingle. All you have to do is stand at the end, from within.

I remember visiting my family in Barbados, when I was told I could not leave the island for seven months; but I wanted to leave on the next boat out. To me, being on that boat was my end; so – while sitting on a chair in my parent’s home – I entered the boat in my imagination and viewed the island as I was departing. I did not know how I would get on it, but a week later when the boat left the island I was there. This I know from experience.

In your desire to go anywhere you must first go there in your imagination, and even those who may deny your request will aid you when the time is right. I got out of the army that way. Knowing I wanted to be honorably discharged and in my apartment in New York City, I slept as though it had already happened and I was already there. Then my captain – who had previously disallowed my discharge – had a change of heart and aided in my release. Anyone can do it. This game is easy to play and can be lots of fun in the doing. Think of an object you would like to hold. Think of a place you would desire to be. Then find an object in that room and feel it until it takes on sensory vividness.

Don’t make it a lamp, but that lamp; not a table, but that table. Sit in that chair until you feel the chair around you. View the room from that chair and you are there, for you are all imagination and must be wherever you are in your imagination. Now, cast your bread upon the water by feeling the relief of being there, and let your genie – who is your slave – build a bridge of incident over which you will cross to sit in that chair, hold that lamp, and touch that table.

In Genesis, the story is told of Isaac – who was unable to see, but capable of feeling – calling to his son, Jacob, saying: “Come close my son that I may feel you. Your voice sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like Esau.” At that moment Jacob – the imaginary, purely subjective state – possessed the qualities of Esau, the objective world. So Isaac gave the imaginary state the right to be born.

As Isaac, you can sit quietly and with your imaginary hands you can feel the difference between a tennis ball, a baseball, a football, and a golf ball. If they are nothing (because they are subjective and not objectively real to you at the moment) then you could not discriminate between them. But, if you can feel the difference between these so-called unrealities, then they must be real, although not yet made objective to your senses. The moment you give them reality in your mind’s eye, they will become real in your world.

Try it just for fun. Take an object and thank the being within you for the gift. Then thank the one on the outside, for within and without are vicarious, as is life; for by observing an odor, a look, or a feeling within, you will discover you are life itself.

Yes, life is a game. Paul calls it a race, saying: “I have finished the race, I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith.” I call it a game. Both are competitive; but the opposition is with self and not with another, for there is no other. Do not try to get even with another. Grant him the right to use the same law to achieve his goal, even though it may be similar to yours. The knowledge you share will never rob you. Simply determine your goal. Feel you have achieved it and cast your bread upon the water. Then drop it and let the game of life be fulfilled in your world.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—10/13/1969

Paul was the first man in history to be set free. His letters, forming a quarter of the New Testament, were written approximately thirty years prior to the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His 1st letter, chronologically speaking, was to the Galatians and began in this manner: “Paul, an apostle – not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.” That statement, if understood, tells the entire story of salvation.

An apostle is one who is sent on a mission. Paul’s mission was to tell the story of salvation from experience. In this same first chapter he makes this confession: “I will have you know, brethren, that I did not receive this from man, it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Paul doesn’t deny that he heard the story from others, just as you and I have. My mother taught me the story of Jesus Christ as secular history. She died believing that one little individual lived and died two thousand years ago. That’s how she was taught by her mother. Throughout the ages men have heard the story told in that manner. So Paul heard it from others, but questioned if that was what the prophets intended, because the only scripture was the Old Testament.

When told of a miraculous birth, a resurrection, and ascension of one who dared to claim he was God the Father, Paul rebelled against the idea – until one day, in shocking suddenness, the mystery of Jesus Christ unfolded in him. Having experienced this pattern of salvation, Paul insisted in defending his interpretation of the story.

Paul tells you who he is, by saying: “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me…” Some translations record the preposition as “to,” but it is not “to,” but “in” – for Luke tells us that “No one knows who the Son is except the Father and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Paul confessed that God revealed his Son in him, therefore he must be God, for only God the Father knows his Son.

John tells us that: “No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” Knowing who he is because of his revelations, Paul claims: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord?” Now, you can take that statement two ways. Paul actually saw the Risen Lord and became what he beheld when the union took place. And because of his experience he could say: “I will tell you a mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations.” It is the mystery of Christ – the image of the invisible God in you – that is your hope of glory.

When Paul wrote his words there was only the one scripture, which was the Old Testament; so we turn to the 17th Psalm and read these words David spoke to the Lord, saying: “Keep me as the apple of the eye and when I awake I will be satisfied in seeing your form.” The phrase translated “the apple of the eye” literally means “the little man of the eye.” Look into the pupil of any man’s eye – be he good or evil – and you will not see the man, but yourself. So the Lord, looking into your eye, sees his own reflection.

Having hollowed out the eye to form a pupil that could reflect, God can only see himself in its darkness. Now, be faithful, O Lord, to the vision you saw when you said: “Let us make man in our image.” Looking into your eye, God sees only himself, and keeps the heavenly vision, no matter what furnaces he puts you through in order to bring himself out as a living being.

Paul realized after the experience what David meant when he said: “Keep me as the apple of the eye.” God, forever beholding himself, does not see the outer you. He sees only the inner man, the same image he saw when he looked at me. No matter what color your outer skin may be, when God looks into your eye he sees only that which he is going to bring out. Having buried himself in you, he will bring out of you the being that he is, endowed with all the power and wisdom that he is and clothed in his body of infinite love. 

You may be a violent, horrible creature here; but when that one is awakened within you, you will come out as God, and God is love! This I know from experience.

Now, Paul does not tell you that, having had the experience, the remaining years will be pleasant. No. His story is one of horror. He was imprisoned, shipwrecked, beaten, and left for dead. Don’t think that once you have experienced scripture you are in any way set free from the horrors of the world, for you are not. 

You will still go through them until the very end, but you will know that when you take off your garment of flesh (your cross) you are set free to radiate and reflect the glory of God, knowing yourself to be the express image of his person. Everyone, individualized without loss of identity, will wear the form of God and possess the power of God, the power to assume any shape or form. Then you will be called and sent on a mission as Paul, an apostle and a free man.

Paul was first known as Saul, which means “ask for,” as Saul was seeking the cause of the phenomena of life. His name was changed to Paul, which means “the little one.” He is the Jacob who is so small you question how he can stand. Look into the pupil of the eye of anyone and your reflection is so small you wonder how it can stand. But Jacob is changed to Israel, which means “the man who rules as God.” Not like a god, but as God. Seeing only himself, Jacob – the supplanter – awakens as Israel and rules as God.

God’s purpose cannot fail, for “He has made known unto me the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” Paul discovered through revelation that Jesus Christ is a plan which is contained in man. The plan is not outside of you, but within; and when it unfolds it is man, for you are man. Paul shared his revelations to the best of his ability. We only have thirteen of his letters. There may have been more, or he may have taken those into his confidence who did not record his words; but I am quite sure that he had the identical plan which unfolded in me. It’s the same story, for there is only one plan. And when the time is fulfilled, that plan will erupt in you, and you will discover you are the Lord God Jehovah.

Paul as a person is not named in any non-biblical source in the first century; yet it is recorded in the Book of Acts and in his letters that Paul was charged, brought before the governor, and imprisoned. Speaking to King Agrippa, Paul said: “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Then he asked the question: “Why should any of you think it incredible that God raises the dead? Now I stand on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers through his prophets.” Yet Paul is not recorded in any works of the first century outside of the Bible. So, you see, Paul is no more a person than Jesus Christ, Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. These are simply names of eternal states of consciousness; and when you reach the state of Paul, the mystery of Jesus Christ will unfold within you and you will be set free.

At the present time you are Jacob, the little one – the image God sees reflected in the pupil of your eye as he beholds himself. God does not see the outer you. He only sees the heart, the inner man who is himself. It is that inner man who is born – not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man – but of God. And what is born? A savior who is Christ the Lord. “I am the Lord, your God and besides me there is no savior.” So when a savior is born it has to be the Lord God Jehovah, whose name forever and ever is I AM.

When I had the experience, I felt myself waking to find myself in a holy sepulcher, the skull where I was buried. I came out without loss of identity to find the symbol of my birth before me. I have now experienced everything recorded in scripture and am sharing my experiences with the world, to encourage those who will listen to believe in the eternal story and repudiate all authorities, institutions, customs, or laws that might interfere with their direct access to their God. No one can aid you towards that image, for it is already in you. That is what God is beholding. You don’t need any authority, be he called a pope, archbishop, rabbi, or priest to lead you to yourself. One day you will awaken as God, and since there is only God in the world everyone will have the experience of knowing that he is God

This eternal story is true. It is planted in you and its eruption will interpret the Old Testament, which is an adumbration – a foreshadowing which cannot be understood until it happens in you. Paul never understood the Old Testament until its promises fulfilled themselves in him. He thought he had to abide by the dietary laws and ceremonies externally, when it does not matter what is done on the outside. If you never see the inside of a church or meet any so-called holy man, it will not matter; for nothing must come between you and your God, and when you find your God you find yourself.

Now God has a son called David, who is the result of his journey through the fires of experience in this world of death. When you see David you will know how true the words are, when he said: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,”‘ for when David stands before you there will be no uncertainty as to your relationship. And you will say, with Paul: “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me I conferred not with flesh and blood.”

To whom would you turn for an interpretation of an experience, when there was no uncertainty in you as to what had happened? So Paul went into Arabia and contacting no one, he communed with self on his fantastic revelation. Here is one who was of the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Paul kept all the laws externally but did not understand them until it pleased God to reveal his Son in him. And because no one knows the Son but the Father, when the Son appears the one beholding him is his Father and knows it.

When I saw David, I knew him more surely than I do my physical children. In this world a father is told that he sired a child. He believes his wife, and maybe the child resembles him, but he has no certainty that it is really his. And the woman, if she is asleep during delivery, doesn’t know whether the child she takes from the hospital is hers or some one else’s. But there is no uncertainty as to the relationship between God the Father and his Son David. None whatsoever.

When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I knew who I really was. Prior to that moment I did not know. I thought I was a little man, born of a certain woman, sired by a certain father in this world. I was taught to believe in the historicity of Jesus – first by my mother, then my teachers and the traditions of the church.

I thought it happened two thousand years ago and was not related to this age, yet I tell you the story of Jesus Christ is contemporary. It is taking place, for God came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the pattern of salvation. This pattern was buried in Man the moment God beheld himself as the apple of the eye. He is going through the furnaces now and may be kind or unkind. “How long, vast and severe the furnaces before he finds the Father are long to tell.” No one knows how long it will be before that moment in time when David will appear to reveal the Father to himself.

It is the Father’s memory which returns when he awakens from the dream of this world. God is dreaming here, caught up in a reality that is his own creation, be it good, bad, or indifferent. “Arouse thyself, why sleepest thou, O Lord! Awake! Do not cast us off forever.” God is the sole author of your world and all within it, although what is happening may frighten you, as it appears to be outside and beyond your control; for you are the dreamer, dreaming your life into being. You are God, conjuring everything in your world, and everything has a symbolic significance for you if you could interpret it.

The story of the Bible begins as a vision of Isaiah, Obadiah, and Ezekiel. These are all visions, spelling out how God became Man that Man may become God. Everything is the unfolding of God, and he is unfolding in you, as you. You are not some little thing on the outside that is cast away, but God himself, dreaming both horrible and lovely dreams while clothed in your bodies of flesh. But one day you will awaken from the dream to find yourself clothed in the human form divine, the immortal form of love, which is God himself.

Yes, you are human and God is Man. Let no one tell you he is not. “Thou art a Man, God is no more. Thine own Humanity learn to adore.” Humanity is the cross God wears. There never was a cross of wood made from a tree, for the tree is in Man. Let our scientists search through nature to find that tree, for their search will be in vain, as the tree where God is crucified is in the human brain. 

That’s where God will rise as you, and where his only begotten Son will stand and call you Father. This heavenly, eternal youth has no mother, for in the resurrection there is no Greek, no Jew, no bond, no free, no male, no female. As a male or female you are a divided image. But as Man you will fulfill scripture.

Now, the basis of Paul’s authority is experience. He experienced scripture. The Bible makes no sense when read as secular history, but it is an open book when experienced. Man is capable of doing, has done, is doing, and will continue to do everything recorded there until he awakens from the dream of life. And – as he promised himself – one day he will awaken as God the Father, yet he will continue to be in bondage to his little garment of flesh and blood. Then he, too, will cry out: “O King Agrippa, why should it be thought incredible that God raises the dead? 
Is this not the promise that God made to our fathers through the prophets? Why am I standing before you chained as I am? Would that you were all as I am, minus the chains.” Although knowing what he had experienced, Paul continued to wear the body of limitation and weakness upon which he was still crucified. But he knew that when it was taken off it would be for the last time. Then he would come into his glory by radiating and reflecting God, knowing he was the express image of His person.

Paul, like all the other characters of scripture, is an eternal state through which Man passes. In the beginning of time you heard the gospel and entered the state of faith called Abraham. Paul makes this statement: “The scriptures, foreseeing that God would save the Gentiles (called heathen) through faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” Then he makes this comment: “The story of Abraham is an allegory.”

Now an allegory is a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character, learn and apply its lesson. Paul continues by saying: “Abraham had two sons, one born into slavery and one born into freedom.” 

If Abraham’s story is an allegory, and the Book of Matthew begins with these words: “This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” – what is the story of Jesus Christ and David, but an allegory! You cannot begin with an allegory and arrive at something called reality, as all ends run true to origin. If the origin is an allegory, its end must be an allegory.

“See yonder fields?
The sesame is sesame, the corn is corn 
The silence and the darkness knew,
And so is a Man’s fate born.”

If the story of Abraham is an allegory, let us discover what we are being told. There are two births: The first is a garment of slavery which comes from the womb of a woman. The second is a spiritual birth which comes – not from blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man – but of God. As these bodies begat themselves so God begets himself. One is the birth into slavery, and the other the birth into freedom.

Paul is the first Man to be set free, and everyone will be Paul, for everyone will be set free by the identical experience. “Creation waits with eager longing to be set free from its bondage to decay any obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”

We are all God’s sons, who collectively form that one being who is God the Father. Every child born in this world is a garment worn by a son of God, as told us in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “He has set bounds to the peoples of the earth according to the number of the sons of God,” and it takes all the sons to form the Father.

The word “Elohim” is sometimes translated God (singular) and sometimes gods (plural) as in the 82nd Psalm: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. Then God turns to the gods and says: “I say, ‘You are sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.’ “

We are the gods who descended into this fabulous biological experiment. This world is the only spot that could cradle such an experiment. Taking upon yourselves the limitations and weaknesses of the human flesh, God is redeeming his sons, one by one, until all are redeemed as the Father. There is only one Father and only one Son. You, the Father, accepted the experience, the result of which is your Son, personified as David.

Having had the experience, I – like Paul – do not deny having heard the story of scripture from my mother and at school. In fact I was beaten for misquoting the Bible, which I had not done. In our little island of Barbados, corporal punishment was allowed, and our school master beat me until blood poured for quoting the words: “Take up thy bed and walk,” when his translation read: “Take up thy couch and walk.” He was a sadist, and to satisfy his own sexual pleasure he took a cane that could be bent into a circle, made me lean over a chair, and beat me unmercifully. 

When my father learned what the teacher had done, it took all of the family and the neighbors to restrain him, because he intended to kill the man; but one year later the man killed himself. I was taken out of school that very day, but the Book of God was driven into my mind.

I tell you the Bible is the only true book. All other books are based upon theory. Today’s theory as to the age of the moon will change, for our men of science are constantly devising new hypothesis upon which to experiment, and therefore are always modifying their little concept of life. But you and I have no need to change, for we have found the truth as our own wonderful human imagination.

I tell you, God (your imagination) is the only reality. He is the dreamer in you, and you and the dreamer are one. That one is God the Father. Jesus Christ is a plan God devised to awaken his sons and set them free from this world of death to return to the world of eternal life.

Now let us go into the silence.

Neville Goddard—03/05/1963

As you know, and I think you do, the Bible is a mystery. A mystery to be known only by revelation. As I told you in the past, a mystery is not a matter to be kept secret but a truth which is mysterious in character. The four Gospels are the flower of the entire Bible. Everything that was promised Israel, as we have it recorded in the 39 books of the Old Testament, came into flower – in the fulfillment of the four Gospels. But even to this day, 2000 years later, many women came seeking, – in the Bible, – for the Christ of whom the prophets spoke and whose coming is told. As we are told, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours inquired and searched about that salvation. They inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory, but they could not find him. They are all looking for a man, and today the whole vast Christian world turns to a man. Those who deny it think in terms of a man that they deny, but they do not know the Christian mystery.

Paul makes the statement: “From now on we will regard no one from the human point of view, even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view we regard him thus no longer.” Yes, even though I once thought of Christ from a human point of view I think of him so no longer. It is something entirely different.

To understand this mystery we have to find the root, and that is in the Old Testament. What did they promise? They found it in the Messianic Book, – Isaiah 11:1-3, – one of the many chapters – but this one is prominent. “There shall come forth a stem from the stump of Jesse and a Branch will go out of that root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall be upon him: The imagery turns from a root, – from a Branch, from a stem, into a man. “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of Knowledge, the Spirit of Counsel, the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.” All these will be upon him. “And he shall not judge by what his eyes see, or desire by what his ears hear.” So here, something is said about a Branch, something is said about a stump out of which the Branch will come. We search the Scripture and we find in the Book of Daniel: “And the king said: ‘I beheld in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. He cried aloud and said this, “Hew the tree down, cut off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. But leave the stump.” Do not disturb the stump. And now he turns from the imagery of the tree with its branches, leaves and stump, to that of a man. “Let him be watered with the dew of heaven,” speaking now of the stump, – and it becomes now a man. “Let him dwell with the beasts of the field. Take from him the mind of a man and give to him the mind of a beast. And let seven times pass over him until he knows that the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will.” And you ask: “What is it all about?” This is the prophecy that is fulfilled in our Gospel.

The word Jesse means “I AM”. It is called “The stump of Jesse.” The word “I AM” which we call Jehovah, – the name of God. In its root meaning means “to fall” or “To cause to fall.” The only Being that fell, – this tree of life, – is God Himself, and for us God fell. He sacrificed Himself to redeem us, to give us life in ourselves. The mystery of life through death, – the death of God, – is that stump. So I am this branch. Now we turn and study the word “Branch”. The stump is “I AM”. The Branch comes out of the stump of Jesse.

The first presentation is in Matthew. Matthew presents the Lord as a king. So where is the Branch identified in the Bible as a king? You find it in Jeremiah 23:5: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king.” So here we find the presentation of this Branch, which is not a tree, – we see now it is a man. Here he is presented as a king. So Matthew gives him the genealogy of a king. He comes down through the royal line. Matthew begins the book: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.” David is the source of the dynasty. The first king of Israel was Saul, chosen by the people, but Jehovah rejected Saul and chose David, and David is the first king of Israel, as chosen by God.

This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David. When I trace the genealogy of a king I must always begin at the source of the dynasty and come down and finish with the king. When I trace the genealogy of a man, I begin with his father and go back as far as I may; but not with a king. You do not say: “This is king so and so, the son of so and so.” You go right back to the source of the dynasty then you bring it forward and it culminates in the king himself. That is how we get the genealogy of a king. That is what Matthew does in presenting the Lord as king to fulfill Jeremiah 23:5.

Mark presents him as a servant, therefore there is no need for a genealogy. The perfect, the ideal servant. So God is now presented as a servant. And here, – where is the branch of the servant? Zech. 3:8. “Behold I will bring forth my servant, the Branch. All this is prophecy, it hasn’t brought him forth, he is bringing him forth. So, Mark does not have a genealogy. Who are you? “I am the servant of the Lord.” Well, that’s good enough. If you are the servant of the Lord there is no need for any further credentials. So his credentials are simply his position in life as the ideal servant, – that’s Mark. In Mark 10:5 he makes this statement: “I come not to be served but to serve.” He is the servant.

Luke presents him as the ideal man, – Jehovah’s man. Where is the Branch concerning it? Read Zech. 6:12. First of all Isaiah claims it in the 40th Chapter: “Behold the man”. He doesn’t use the word Branch, but Zechariah to fulfill the prophecy brings in the Branch: “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch.” So, Luke presents him the ideal man and should have a genealogy. When you read the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke they differ.

At the beginning of David, the king, they part, and David’s older son, Nathan becomes the line through which Luke takes Jesus Christ. His younger son Solomon becomes the one he takes bringing him into a king. Here you find a complete different genealogy for fourteen generations and another fourteen following them. Here you have these many generations where they are entirely different background and people think you can’t be telling the story of the same person, but people don’t know the mystery. You are presenting not a person, you are presenting, not a man, you are presenting something altogether different. Christ is not a man, a king, a servant. Christ that saying, is a series of mystical experiences through which God reveals Himself for the salvation of man, – that is Christ.

The whole vast New Testament is based upon the assumption that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed Himself in action for the salvation of man. Did they happen? We are told in the Scripture they did happen. I claim the evangelists were telling their own story, as told us in the end of Luke: “And they told what had happened.” Moffitt takes that phrase and describes it and translates it; ‘They related their own experience.” They are relating a series of mystical happenings in the soul of the individual where God revealed Himself in these actions for the salvation of that individual. So, Luke presents God as the ideal man: “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch.” He must have a genealogy and this goes all the way back unbroken to Adam, the son of God. 

John, on the other hand, presents him as God Himself, – no need of a genealogy. Now, this you find is Isaiah 4:2. “And the day is coming,” it’s always in the future, it’s all prophecy, – “When the Branch of Jehovah will be beautiful and glorious.” And men are still looking for this Branch to flower in some mighty conqueror who will come and save humanity from the tyrants who are loose in the world. He doesn’t come that way. They denied he was a king because they did not read carefully. “My kingdom is not of this world.” They are still expecting him in some way to entrench himself in the world and establish a kingdom; and reveal what they believe to be David’s kingdom, – and all these must be spiritualized.

All the characters mentioned as his background, his genealogy, are states of consciousness. Here it begins: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.” The very end of the genealogy Joseph’s father is called Jacob. Matthew 1:17 and two verses on the 20th verse: “The angel of the Lord appears unto Joseph in a dream and says: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife.” Three verses before it is said in the genealogy that his father was Jacob, and just a few verses down the angel of the Lord addresses him as “Joseph, son of David.” Here in the genealogy Joseph is called the father, and the genealogy begins with “Jesus Christ, son of David.” Don’t you see it? You have to spiritualize all of these characters. They are states of consciousness. They are not persons any more than Jesus Christ is a person. Jesus Christ is that series of events unfolding like a tree in man for the salvation of that man in whom this series unfolds. But man cannot think that way if he wants to personify it and put it in a wall, or in some little hole and do something with it. And it isn’t that.

So, here in Mathew we find the presentation of God as a king. In Mark he is presented as the ideal servant. In Luke God is presented as the ideal man and in John – God Himself. So in John he speaks and calls Himself constantly “I AM”. “I am the vine; I am the way; I am the truth; I am the resurrection; I am the door.” All through he is emphasizing who He really is, the Being that you are. But the series of events, I promise you, will unfold within you. When they unfold within you, you know who you are, and you could no more keep it to yourself than the evangelist who experienced Christ could have kept it to himself. They couldn’t. Having experienced Christ, they could not keep their experience of Christ to themselves, so they told it.

Now let us show you what Luke tells us in his own words. Why they translated it this way I do not know. Luke begins his book: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to encircle a narrative of the thing which have been accomplished among us, as it was revealed to us by those who were eye witnesses from the beginning, it seemed good to me also, having observed closely for sometime past.” Now that phrase, “For sometime past”, is a translation of the Greek word Zecharias, which means “from above”. When it is used in the 3rd chapter of John it is used “From above”, when he said to Nicodemus: “You must be born from above. Except you be born from above you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Yet here in the book of Luke the same words, no alteration, the identical word is translated in this phase: “For sometime past.” So he is telling you if you go back to the original tongue where he got it. “Having observed all things closely from above it seems good to me also to write an orderly account to you Theophilus, – a lover of God, one who seeks God, – and he is telling him where he got it. He is not making any claims that his arrangement is a greater chronological arrangement of the false material. What he is telling us is he got it from above and he is going to write it in an orderly arrangement which he claims is a better arrangement, better understood by man. So he begins with a birth and he ends, for man’s sake, with a crucifixion.

That is not the way in which Luke got it, for Luke is not his name. All this is anonymous. Whoever calls himself Luke did not receive it in that order. But he thinks it is a better arrangement to be understood by mortal mind, until they themselves have the experience. So, what the Gospels are telling us, believe it. Believe it for the works’ sake.

Now he tells us how to prove the Law of God and in proving the Law of God you may believe his Promise. Then he tells us what to do about the Law of God: “Ask anything in my name” – don’t forget the name, – the name is “I AM”, – “And it will be done unto you.” Don’t call it by any other name, and when you call upon my name, call with my name. Don’t say: “In the name of I AM.” Just declare yourself to be “I AM”. I am what? You name it. Whatever you want to be just name it, but call with my name. So, call “I am healthy, I am lovely, I am loved, I am anything you think lovely in your world, call upon it by calling with the name.

Then he tells them: “I come to testify of things that I know and that I have seen. If you will not receive the testimony that I bring from things of earth, how will you receive the testimony of mine if I tell you of things of Heaven.”

Let me give you a vision of mine that happened many years ago to show you how it was revealed to me long before it began to awaken in me. Just like the vision of the 4th of Daniel, only in my case it wasn’t a tree. But just as he starts off the vision: “The visions of my head as I lay in bed.” Suddenly I saw this fabulous field, and consciousness followed vision and I entered the field. It had no limit, it was infinite. At first I thought them to be flowers, long tall flowers like sunflowers. As I approached them they were not flowers, they were all rooted like a flower into the earth; but they were human faces, everyone was a face. As I came upon them they moved in concert as though someone led them in some orchestra, and they all moved and bent over. If one smiled they all smiled. They all did everything in concert. While I walked among them admiring these beautiful human faces, that were anchored like a flower, I realized right at that moment that I, – not comparable to them in beauty, – nothing in that rhythm and yet I enjoyed greater freedom, limited as I was, than all of them put together. They moved in concert and I had freedom of movement even though my motion was not in harmony. I had freedom of choice even if I made the wrong choice. I could choose evil, they could do nothing. They could do nothing of themselves. And I realized that with all of my limitations, I was greater. I could make a mistake and they couldn’t. I could actually move without the consent of another; they couldn’t. And beautiful as they were, I realized how much infinitely greater I was, limited as I was, because I was detached from that field. And I thought in the depths of me that at one time I must have been one of that orchestra. And God in his infinite mercy, fell with me, and then took up residence in me.

Then seven times had to pass over me, the fiery ordeal. I had to be given a human face, – “Take the mind of man from him and give him the mind of a beast.” Let him know this was the beast of the field. “Sever everything from him; cut off the branches, strip the leaves, scatter the fruit but don’t disturb the roots,” – and the root is God Himself. That is Jesse. But, “Seven times must pass over him until he knows that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will.” And He gives it in that moment that He gives us Christ; and Christ is that series of mystical experiences taking place in the individual soul, for the soul’s salvation.

I can see that field of flowers now, perfectly beautiful human faces, – not a blemish, everything perfect, everything in perfect rhythm as if some invisible director directed them. You and I were once part of that harmony and then the harmony became broken for our salvation, and we descended because God descended with us. He didn’t push us out. The word He Vau He means “to fall” and that is the root of the verb Yod He Vau He, which we call Jehovah, the great sacred name. The name by which all things are made.

So, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John presents this mystery of the Branch. I tell you it grows in us. As Blake said: “The Gods of the Earth and the Sea sought through Nature to find this Tree, but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain.” And that tree is turned down. If you saw the human being and take off the skin and see just the nervous system, it is just like an inverted tree. Where the brain is, is the root, and the whole tree grows down. But that tree is going to be turned up, and one day you will see it turned up and there will be a complete severance of your being, called the “Curtain of the temple”, – and then you, that was living down not even knowing it, will be turned right up and all the currents of eternity are now reversed in you, and from then you grow up.

The vision I had of this many years ago startled people. I first told it in San Francisco. Why the reaction was horrible. Yet the Book of Mark, speaking of the servant of the Lord, who is the Branch, speaks of it. When the Lord opened the eyes of the blind man and said: “What do you see?” He said: “I see men like trees walking.” There it is: “I see men like trees walking.” That night I had this vision of the majesty of man when he is turned up. You will think, “How can I be a tree?” The beauty, the joy when you see it, – something altogether different; but how can you describe it? You can’t describe it to the satisfaction of anyone because who wants to be a tree? And yet, here inverted, – and we are called the Branch. Don’t forget it. “And there shall come forth from a stem from the stump of Jesse,” from the stump of “I AM”, “and a branch will grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:1-3) “Fear” means “the reverence of the Lord.”

Again these same four, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is revealed to us in a strange way when the child is given a name. Isaiah 9:6. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor.” Two entirely different experiences; – a child is born, a son is given. Don’t put a comma between Wonderful and Counselor as so many Bibles have. Bear in mind there were no punctuation marks in the ancient Hebrew, not even breaks or paragraphs, it is all continuous. There are four names given in keeping with the fourfold Gospel. “His name shall be called; Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” There are four titles.

Wonderful Counselor, – that is Omniscience itself. You can add nothing to a Being who is completely awake; they would not have the automatic answer. So, here is Omniscience. Mighty God, – Divine Omnipotence. That is when the third title comes. Then, Prince of Peace, that is at the very end when you are about to take off the garment for the very last time, as told us in the book of John. “My peace I leave with you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” He gives us peace that is beyond understanding. You can’t disturb that peace for he is the “Prince of Peace.” He is an “Everlasting Father”, – he is Father forever. “When you see me you see the Father.” “Almighty God.” – A might beyond the wildest dreams of anything you have ever seen. And when you see that Might you see it personified as a man. You look into his eyes and you see might as you have never known it before – and it is a man. Then “Wonderful Counselor”. He promises he will send the Counselor. When he withdraws he will send the servants who have the understanding to follow him as he reveals what happened to him.

So when you read the Gospels, whether it be Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, do not see a man walking through the pages, see the magnificence of Christ the Branch unfolding in you, and it takes root. There will come out a root from that stump. How does it take root? Well, you first hear the story and you believe it. Then the Word is planted. When one believes it, he has accepted the Word. The Word as translated in the Book of John is called Logos. “In the beginning was the Word,” that is the Greek Logos: “And the Word was with God and the Word was God.” That is really the translation of the Hebrew which means “The word of God, which contains within itself the power of it’s own expression.” That “Word” in the first verse of the Book of John is Christ. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Now turn to Isaiah 55:11. “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purposed and fulfill that where I sent it.” So the word when it comes is The Word called Christ. I tell you the story, believe it. The minute you believe it you have accepted it, it has fallen on fertile ground. It will then take root; and the word contains within itself the power of it’s own expression. The whole vast program of God for man’s salvation is contained in that Word, “the seed”, and it falls upon man and man hears it. He either believes it or he rejects it.

Here we move across the world and seven times pass over us until one day we hear it with acceptance and then the little root takes place in that stump of Jesse, the stump of “I AM.” Then out of it comes the Branch, and then the Spirit of the Lord descends upon him. From then on he moves and you can’t stop him. You can’t earn it, – accept it. Believe the story as it was intended when you first listened; completely misunderstood through the centuries.

He tells it of a certain individual who was born in a strange way; raised in a strange way and died a horrible death. That’s not the story at all. If I would comfort you with the death it is Romans 6:5: Here we are told: “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall be united with him in a resurrection like his.” He uses the past tense when it comes to death, the future when it comes to resurrection. So the unity took place in his death, or He fell, and all of us are in it and now he is asking us for acceptance of the Word. We have union with him in a death like His, we shall have union with him in a resurrection like His. And He resurrects us one after the other by a series of fantastic, wonderful mythical experiences one after the other. We can’t contrive them, they come like a thief in the night when least expected. Everything said in the Gospel concerning the central figure is all about you, from beginning to end.

I tell you the death has already taken place, even though the death took place to free us all. It has been felled. You downed the tree, cut off the branches, that is all over. Stripped the leaves, scattered the fruit, given the mind of a beast. Well, haven’t we the mind of a beast? Go back 20 years. What beast in the world would have conceived by ovens to burn innocent people by the millions? Isn’t that the mind of a beast? Have you read here recently the current stories of Stalin, the things the man did with those even in the most intimate circles? That no one felt at ease in his presence? From Molotov down, all like little children shaking, everyone of them. It came out last Sunday in the Times, in yesterday’s Observer, in today’s New York Times. All these stories because today is the tenth anniversary of his death. There is no beast that would have done the things the man did to his own people. He hated everything in the world and so did Hitler. So, “Take the man’s mind from him and give him the mind of a beast.” Who gave the order? God. And this is the order from on high.

Now in the eyes of the world they seemed to be so far advanced because they were so powerful. In the exercise and misuse of power they are on the down, they are descended. Seven times must pass over the mind of the beast before they could accept the story of Christianity. Both rejected it, both called it foolish, said the whole thing was stupid, the opium of humanity, said one, quoting his master, Karl Marx. The other looked upon Christianity as the weakest thing in the world. The Christ to him was nothing but a weakling because he couldn’t kill. He said “Put up the sword” and “Turn the other cheek” and “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” So here you see the beast of beasts and all at God’s command. “Take from him the mind of a man and give him the mind of a beast, and let his lot be among the beasts, but do not disturb the root, leave the stump and let it be watered with the dew of Heaven.”

And then there is a reversal and all of a sudden the stump puts out a shoot. It can’t put out the shoot until it first heard the Word of God. We must all go and tell the world and it must start in Jerusalem and spread to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Go and tell it. And some will accept it and some will reject it. Those that reject it, alright, because seven times must pass over. And what are the seven times/ Read the 3rd Chapter of the Book of Daniel. “And heat the furnaces seven times more than they were wont to be.” Then comes the three Hebrew boys and they are put into the furnace, clothed. Then the king said: “Were there not three?” They answered “Yes”. “But I see four and the fourth has the form of the Son of God.” Three were put in, the three-fold man, the three dimensional man, but goes with them the fourth, God Himself. For the fourth is God Himself. When they came out, “Their hair was not singed, nor even the smell of fire upon their garments.” Then he, Nebuchadnezzar, worshipped the God of Israel, worshipped the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

The whole thing is a mystery to be unfolded in the simple way it began by telling you of Christ of the Scripture. He is unfolding in you in a series of events, revealing to you your salvation. Peter in his Epistle said: “The prophets told how they searched and inquired about the grace that was to be yours: and how they inquired about their salvation, asking what person, what time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within him when prophesying and predicting of the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.” But they didn’t find it. They couldn’t find the Christ of whom they wrote and whose coming they foretold, because they were looking for a man. Today they are still looking for a man, and looking for a time. They think maybe 1963 will bring it, or 1964. All through the ages people have thought a certain moment in time was the coming of Christ, or the coming of a person; but he doesn’t come that way. He comes in you and when you have him, you share him with everyone who will listen. Many will say, because they know you so well: “Don’t I know him? Isn’t he Mary’s child? Isn’t his father named George? Doesn’t he work in the factory with me. I know him so what is he talking about?” They expect an entirely different kind of person to come. They don’t expect the garment to have in it an experience that no mortal man could possibly have. It all happens in the depths of the soul of a man. Then he goes back and he sees where it was all foretold but: “Naught could he himself foresee.”

It’s all there but he couldn’t dig it out anymore than the scholars can until it happens. And after it comes to the surface in him he is bewildered. When the dust settles so that he really can talk about it without excitement, a few will listen and the majority will turn their backs. They say: “He’s talking about a Christ I never heard of before. I’d rather have my old Christ, because to him I can kneel, to him I can say a prayer in the hope that he will have compassion on me and respond; but this Christ.” A series of mystical experiences in the soul of man where the whole tree has fallen, and suddenly the tree that was felled and downed turns around? And then the whole thing goes back into the stump itself, the skull of man, and from then on it begins to really grow; and then he knows what the glory is Paul spoke of?” “For there is laid up for me in Heaven a crown of glory.” He himself grows it, no one puts it upon him. It is a living crown, not a crown as the human eye sees when they see the queens crown. Do you know of any crown comparable to the antlers of a stag? Did you ever see such majesty in your life when you see this beautiful thing. Did you ever see such majesty as a tree in full bloom? No. Don’t even try to visualize it, because it frightens people. The writer of the Book of Mark could see it correctly. What do you see now with the eye open: “I see men like trees walking.”

Believe the story as I told you this night concerning Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You are the fourfold man. One presents you with a king to fulfill the 23rd Chapter of Jeremiah. He said: “I have come to fulfill the Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me. “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interprets with them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” It was all about this being that you are.

Then comes the presentation of the ideal servant. Zech. 3:8 “Behold, I will bring my servant the Branch.” (6:12) “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch.” Then comes the fulfillment of the 4th of Isaiah. All must be fulfilled. So, these four branches must take root and all grow and mature in man. We have king, servant, the ideal man and God Himself.