selective focus photo of purple petaled flowers

Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation | A Neville Goddard Lecture

February 2, 2024

Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation | A Neville Goddard Lecture

Tonight’s subject is “Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation.” God’s plan of salvation appears so different in prospect from what it really is in retrospect. If you haven’t experienced it and you trust the one who has, do not at any time forget or ignore the out and out supernatural character of this plan of salvation and never try to interpret it in some naturalistic way. That’s what the whole vast world tries to do with the plan of salvation. It’s supernatural from beginning to end. The whole drama takes place in the inner man: The inner man is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory, so it hasn’t a thing to do with something on the outside. The whole drama is taking place on the inside. And so, I have experienced it, and let me share with you what I have experienced.

But first of all, let me thank you for what you’ve done over the last few months in sharing with me your letters, your experiences in the use of God’s law, and in your visions, your wonderful mystical experiences. This morning’s mail brought three perfectly wonderful letters, all visions. Let me give you the highlights of two of them. One I will take at some future date, it’s too long. But, I’ve told you in the past that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and you and I only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively. You and I did not choose it. We were made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected us in hope; and that hope was that you and I would be set free from this bondage to corruption, and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20). We find ourselves here, and we must admit we were born of the action of powers not our own, and this is the physical birth. Let us now admit that we are also born spiritually by the actions of powers beyond ourselves. We certainly didn’t do it physically; we found ourselves here. Don’t let anyone tell you that by some effort on your part that you’re going to be born spiritually into some wonderful world. It’s all being done by the one who subjected us to this wheel of futility.

Now this morning’s letter brought…this mail brought this letter. She said, “My mother died in ’53. She was, I would say, seventy years old—-she might have been seventy-one, two, but she was in her late sixties or early seventies. I met her in my vision and mother was radiantly beautiful. She looked about thirty, and the joy, I can’t describe the joy of my mother. She told me that when she left here she moved into the age or the year 3,804 at the age of twenty-one. She found herself twenty-one years old, living in the year 3,804. Then I asked her many questions. There were many interruptions by people and circumstances, but I tried to get as many questions across as I could. She seemed to be quite familiar with your teaching, although in this world where she left eleven years ago she never heard of you in any way whatsoever. But your name was not a strange thing to her in that circle where she now lives. I got the impression that she’s married. And I tried to find my father and my brother Art to share with them my experience that I met mother. She told me she is living in a part of Pennsylvania. I asked her if death to her in that world of 3,804 is like death to us in this world, and she said it was the same thing. They feared it as we fear it, and they know it is the inevitable as we know it is the inevitable. Then she said, ‘Our moral code, our ethical code is just like your code, same thing.’ But she also said, ‘We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed. I found myself twenty-one years old. At death being seventy, I was twenty-one in a time sequence that is the 3804th year A.D.’”

Now, in the Bible we’re taught that there is nothing new under the sun: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? I tell you it has been already, in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after, among those who will come later; for there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9-11). That’s difficult for man to understand. And then he reads the Book of Ezekiel, where there are wheels within wheels within wheels, all turning. Then he reads the Book of Romans where you and I, not willingly, but subjected to the will of God for a divine purpose, that we would, being subjected, one day be freed from this futility and obtain, having gone through it, the glorious liberty of the children of God. And that liberty comes; and it is inaugurated by a divine event and we call that event resurrection.

But resurrection seen from a certain angle comes seemingly at the last, and it doesn’t. The great mystery: It comes not at the end of history, it comes within history. This very night it could come to all of you, or to one of you. I do not know, no one knows. So when they asked the question, “When, O Lord?” he said, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons that’s fixed by the authority of God” (Acts 1:7), by his own authority. But wait for the promise of the Father, just wait—he has promised to redeem you. Redeeming you is redeeming himself, he’s not redeeming another. It is God who fell asleep in the great creation called “the wheels and wheels within wheels” for educative and creative purposes. That by putting himself into the state likened unto death—-it’s not really death but it’s so still, so altogether a sound sleep that it seems like death. But the ancient scripture, the Old Testament, does not use the word “resurrection,” it implies it. But I would rather go back and use the term that is used in the Old Testament. The New uses the word “resurrection” throughout, and I love it, it’s a marvelous term, and I use it here night after night. But in the old scripture, they only speak of “waking from sleep.”

The 78th Psalm, which is a maschil, meaning special instruction, it is a recapitulation of the entire history of Israel, which is divine history. We come to almost the end, the 65th and 66th verses, it’s a very long chapter, and then suddenly we’re told that God or “the Lord God awoke as from sleep” (Psalm 78:65, 66). He awoke as from sleep and then he chose Judah and chose David. Then we come to the end of the glorious awakening of the being who was asleep, as the whole story was being told. You start in the beginning of that chapter, the 78th chapter, and he simply tells the traditions of the fathers: “I will open my mouth in a parable, and I will utter dark sayings from of old.” And he tells all the stories of Israel, the horrors of the world, and the conquering of Jehovah—how he conquers, and he overcomes and he overcomes and he overcomes. Man still falls back, but God overcomes…and then the Lord God awakes. He awakes as from sleep. When he wakes from sleep, then the whole thing comes to an end.

Now we are all told to please tell it just as it happened. Don’t embellish it, don’t add to the word of God; don’t take from the word of God. Well, the word translated word—in the New Testament the word logos—-has as a root meaning “that which is behind the thing.” That is, the sense or the meaning of the thing. So when we are told, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” (John 1:1) that word logos, translated “word,” means “that something that is the sense or the meaning behind the event, whatever that event is.” So when you tell it, tell it clearly. So at the end of Luke we are told, “They related their own experience”; they told what had happened, not embellished, don’t add to it. And that’s why I don’t quarrel with the use of the word resurrection, for it is part of the event. But I would go back to the 78th Psalm and rather use that terminology. For in my own case, when I was taken off the wheel of recurrence but left on it to tell the story, for I must tell it until this garment comes off; and when it comes off now it comes off for the last time. I do not find myself—like my friend Larry’s mother who found herself in the year 3,804—I am through with the wheels within wheels within wheels. But I must remain on the present wheel, the year 1964, and tell it until that time when the garment is taken off, and this time for the last time; for I am not going through death any more.

But I must tell you, the night it happened to me, that force, I can’t describe it save it was the most intense force. We call it an electrical force or charge. But, every morning I wake and I feel myself coming-to into this world and I wake. But that day, four years ago, I felt myself coming-to, and I thought it would be like the normal waking here. But it wasn’t! The most intense vibration I’ve ever felt, and I’m waking alright, but I’m waking to find myself in a tomb, and the tomb, the sepulcher is my skull, an entirely different form of awakening. So they say in the 78th Psalm, “And the Lord God awoke as from sleep.” I awoke from sleep, but it was a different waking from any waking I’ve ever had, that I have any memory of. I awoke to find myself entombed. So I can see the use of the word resurrection, for how could you possibly come out of a tomb, therefore resurrected, unless you were dead? But I had no sense of being dead; I felt I was waking from sleep. That’s what the Old Testament teaches. So I was waking from sleep and I awoke to find myself in a tomb. So I could only then conclude if I am now in a tomb I must have been dead or someone thought me dead, because you don’t put anyone in a tomb and seal it, as I was sealed in that tomb, unless you were dead. And so, the only sensation of being dead was that I am now in an actual sepulcher, a tomb.

And then you come out, and you come out and you are born from above. For this is the area of the tomb; it’s your skull. So when you come out of your skull, as you’re told in the Book of 1st Peter, “We are born anew by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). Only Jesus Christ is ever awakened, ever resurrected; so everyone who resurrects or who is awakened to find himself entombed, he is Jesus Christ. He is now telling the story to the world, and they can accept it or reject it, it’s entirely up to them. But he must tell the story, and it is so important that the story of Jesus and the salvation of God be told, and then let man respond to it. He will accept it, sometimes modified. Let him just reject it completely or let him in some way just toy with the idea.

But all the minds who hear the story from the one who has experienced it are like certain soils in the world, and he, the one who tells the story, is the sower who goes forth to plant, and he spreads the seed of truth. It falls sometimes on the highway. It falls on the highway and then the birds devour it (Mat. 13:3). The birds are simply all the great rumors: “After all, that man is just a normal person like yourself, he’s been married twice, he has children, he knows what it is to know a person intimately, he is a meat eater, he drinks, he does all these things, so forget it.” And so, quickly the idea is gobbled up. Another one hears it with eagerness, but the cares of the day are more than his attention can cope with, and so the seed, the idea, is choked. And then you go from one to the other and all different soils of the world. You may find in a gathering…but we’re told in scripture you will always find a remnant. The remnant is considered ten percent, told in many ways in the Bible. There is always ten percent of any gathering who would listen to you, who will be the soil on which it can fall. It falls on that soil and brings forth a hundredfold, meaning that it will come forth. When it comes forth then he will have the identical experience—while you have been detached from the wheels of recurrence.

Now let me share with you another story that comes into this, this morning. This gentleman writes, he said, “I felt myself sitting on a nest. Of course it might have been prompted, said he, by the story you told of the dove that is now in your tree outside of your window, but I felt myself sitting on a nest as a dove would sit. Then I felt something move under me, like something alive, and I raised myself slightly, and then I looked and observed an egg. As I observed the egg, I felt the egg breaking. Suddenly the egg began to break and it broke, and out came you. You were about two inches tall but you were fully proportioned, everything was perfect in proportion. As you came out you said, ‘Bill’— that’s his name. And then he said to me, ‘But Neville you are so little!’ and I said to him, ‘In God’s creation everything begins small and then it expands and expands and expands’ and at that, before my eyes you grew to immensity before my eyes. Then, relative to you I was the little one and you were this immense being standing before me. Then you went over to another nest, and there you took from this nest our mutual friend Jan Johnson and you brought her. And with your hand on Jan and your hand on me, you still remained this immensity, and Jan was my size relative to you. We are both the same little ones and you are this immense being, and you took us both, each in a hand, and together we walked up into the sky.”

Now you have a vision, don’t discard it. Go back into scripture and search diligently for something that would throw light on it. Now, let me give you, if you’re in the audience tonight, the passage: it’s the 7th chapter of Amos, the 2nd verse. So you go back and you read the ancient scripture for some foreboding, some shadow, some intimation of what you had in the depths. For are we not told, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and I will speak with him in a dream” (Num. 12:6). And so, you had it. Only God speaks to you in dream. There’s only one source of dream in scripture and that source is God. So he’s telling you something— go back into his word, his ancient scripture, and search. Well, in the 7th chapter you’ll find it and these are the words: “O Lord God, forgive! How can Jacob…how can Jacob stand? He is so small!” (Amos 7:2). How can Jacob stand? He is so small! And then we are told in that same chapter the Lord forgives and said, “It shall not be” and then he allowed Jacob to stand. Now, the word Jacob means, by the concordance, our biblical concordance, “to enlarge, to expand.” And there is no limit to the expansion, that’s the word Jacob. It’s called “the supplanter” on the surface, but in definition, it is “the capacity to enlarge and to expand.” So, here is the little one, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” and then God repented, changed an attitude towards this that is coming out, and allowed it to expand to the limit. And there is no limit to expansion, there’s only a limit to contraction; there’s no limit to translucency, there’s only a limit to opacity. So if my friend would go back into scripture and read it and search, he would find the secret of his vision, for I came out from that little egg.

Well, a few months ago, last year really, when the voice said to me, “The whole vast world is only for hatching,” that’s all that it is. The whole vast world is for hatching. And so, worlds within worlds, all turning, and so you slip from this age 1964 into 3804— and the purpose is only for hatching. At some moment in time man thinks now that this world is moving from moment to moment to moment in some linear progression. It isn’t, it’s a cycle. And so 1964 and 3804 are taking place at one and the same time. Columbus is now discovering this country for the first time on that wheel as it turns. Everything is turning at the same time…and we are inserted.

But she also said this to her son, “We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed, none whatsoever.” Then you go back and read the scripture. “What is that in scripture?” she said that to him. And you go back and read the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans, that “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of him who subjected him in hope that the creature would be set free from this bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (verse 20). So we are subjected, but who subjected it? God, subjecting himself; it’s only God. It is God who awakes from this fantastic creation and when he wakes, he has by this strange subjection increased his capacity to create. For the only purpose of it all is to develop one’s creative power. And God is not absolute, as the world would call it, God is forever expanding. If God were absolute, the whole thing would be dead. God is potentially absolute and can create and create forever and forever. And God is man.

So to come back to this plan of salvation, the plan is in scripture. It begins…the whole thing is inaugurated with an event we call his resurrection from the dead; the first-fruits of those who slept; the first-born from the dead (Rev. 12:5). But the first-born, not the only born. So a great judgment is passed upon those who teach that the resurrection is past already. Read it in Paul’s letter, the 2nd letter to Timothy, he said: There are those who are teaching that the resurrection is past and over. They are misleading the people, and in misleading them they’re turning them from the faith (2:18). And he pronounces on them an uncompromising condemnation, for the resurrection has started. It is taking place. And moment after moment after moment you and I are being detached from this wonderful wheel where we were born out of it as it were. But being in it…if we were not in it, we could never develop beyond what we were prior to coming into it.

So we are told in scripture, the 20th of Luke: And the Sadducees—-the Sadducees are the wise people, they are the scientists of the day—-and they asked a question: Master, Moses in the law said that if a man marries leaving no offspring and has brothers, the brothers should marry the widow and raise up issue. Well, there were seven brothers; and the first one who’s married, he died leaving no offspring; and the second took her to wife and he left no offspring when he died, then the third, and finally all of them married her, and then they all died, and then she died. Whose wife is she in the resurrection (verses 27-36)? They did not believe in the resurrection, for they thought it just couldn’t be. They saw people die and that was the end of them, like all scientists of the world, or most of the scientists. And he said to this wise scientist, “You do not know the scripture. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they can die no more; they are now sons of God and sons of the resurrection” (verse 34). Well, by that very statement he implies that they do, in dying, still die. So he tells you they die no more. Well, here he talks to someone who is awake, who must actually go through the experience of death, physical death, but he’s telling you he dies no more. But these who seemingly die will continue to die, like my friend Larry’s mother. She knows that they fear death as we here fear death; they experience death as we experience death. And she will slip from the year 3804, however long she lives there—it may be 3890 before she makes her exit from that wheel—-to find herself in a wheel that is behind it in so-called time. For all are moving together. So what is up and what is down if the wheel is moving? This is now the apex and this is the nadir; but if the wheel is moving, this that is now the apex becomes the nadir, and this is apex. So what is up and what is down when the wheels are moving within wheels within wheels? And it’s all for the bringing out of this turning nest. It’s a nest…for the voice said, “The whole vast universe is for hatching, only hatching.”

This morning’s mail can bring two letters from two entirely different friends of mine. They meet here socially, but only in the last few months they met each other in this room. Prior to that, my friend Larry has been coming here for years, and my friend Bill, who wrote the other letter, only came here last November. So they only met here in the last few months…and they dovetail, one bringing out the hatching story that was told me, and the other bringing out the wheels within wheels. So here, 3804 she told him as he understood it. She knows that she never heard of me here in the year 1964. When she died in ’53, she never heard of me, I was completely unknown. But my works are known to her in the year 3804 and my name is not a stranger to her.

So it was always so. That’s part of the game, that’s part of the great play. And we come out of it in the most wonderful manner. But it begins…the whole thing is inaugurated by that event that we call resurrection—his resurrection from the dead. After the resurrection comes the birth, and after the birth comes that end of the book of the 78th chapter of Psalms. For as he awakes as one from sleep and becomes one who shouts as a man filled with wine, and he puts all of his enemies to rout, all adversaries are routed and they are everlastingly put to shame. The whole vast wheel is now put to shame as far as he who has awakened from it. For it subjected him to the most horrible things in the world. Then he awakens from it. Then he calls Judah, and then he calls David, and takes David from the flocks where he was taking care of the ewes, those that were “in lamb.” And David is then the third one. You find him, and you discover him, and discovering him you know who you are. In the same chapter of Luke that we quoted earlier, when the Sadducees asked about resurrection, on the heels of his answer he then brings up the question and asks the question concerning David. And then he answers the question and tells you who David is. But no one sees it.

That’s why I said at the beginning of this message tonight that this mystery of salvation, it appears in prospect so different from what it really is in retrospect. Who by reading the story would see it in prospect as it really is? It isn’t as the world will tell you. Seeing it in prospect, it took place two thousand years ago and he is something unique on the outside, and you worship him on the outside. And that isn’t so at all. It takes place in the new man. The new man is in every man being formed. When he’s completed, when he’s formed, then it unfolds like a flower in that new man who is in every man; for every man contains Jesus Christ. Well, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is within you?” “Test him and see” (2 Cor. 13:5). Long before he unfolds these petals—-which is simply the resurrection; and the birth; and the discovery of the fatherhood of God; and the ascent into heaven in the form of a serpent; and the descent of the dove upon him, where he’s blessed and smothered with the affection of the Holy Spirit—-long before that, test him and see if he’s not within you. For by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that is made (John 1:3). So test him and see.

So the Jesus Christ of scripture is the Jesus Christ in you, and he is your own wonderful loving human Imagination. God and God alone became man. In becoming man he’s Jesus Christ. He now has to awaken. As he awakens, it’s nothing but God. There’s no intermediary between yourself and God, none whatsoever, as you’re told in the 43rd and the 45th chapters of Isaiah: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior” (verses 3, 5). He became man that man may become God. But in becoming man he and he alone goes through all the furnaces of affliction as he turns the wheels and wheel after wheel.

What determines the jump in time between 1953 when she made her exit and 3804? Strangely enough, she said, I awoke there; I was twenty-one. When he saw her he estimated her age at thirty, within the range of thirty…that would be the growth. So they still grow. They do exactly what you do, what I do, they have all the conflicts, but the year differs and all things differ. They make their exit through a grave to find themselves awake at a certain age in a different time-slot as it were. But this world here is the very limit of contraction. I have slipped into these worlds unnumbered times. When I speak of this world, not other worlds, ___(??), when I speak of this world, they are scared to death. This world to them is hell. They can’t conceive of anyone recovering from this world, they can’t.

I stepped into a world and here was Heine, and Heine, the brilliant German poet, essayist, artist, and Heine was instructing them. Heine said to me, “You know, they don’t call this world of yours where you just came from, they don’t call it Earth, they call it Woodland. They can’t conceive that anyone could ever recover from that descent to Woodland.” Well, now search the scriptures for it. Is it called Woodland? It is, in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark (verse 24). You go back into Mark and the eye was opened. When the blind man, born blind, had his eyes opened he was asked, “What do you see?” and he said, “I see men; like trees walking.” So they call this…if a man would ever come here, he’d become like a tree, a tree walking. So he would lose all identity, he would lose his humanity, he would lose what he is by coming here. This is the limit of contraction. No one wants to come here. And when I decided to return to this world, and had to go, for my time was come to depart from that world, and I began to say goodbye, they all rushed because they didn’t believe my story. They said, “What an imaginative being! What stories he’s talking about!” But I was telling them only the things of Earth but they wouldn’t believe me. And they came…when I began to descend and a voice said “All down for Woodland” you should have seen the fear, sheer ghastly fear on their faces when I began to descend. Only one came with me and she was the old dowager, one who belonged to a certain group who had usurped my estate in my absence when I came here. These are fantastic stories but they’re all true.

So we’re living in a world…you think, well now, this is the most real world, and tomorrow we develop the present energy into something else, to something else, and it’ll go on forever in one direction. Don’t believe it! We’re going to turn the wheel, the wheel is turning, but the wheel is so large, we can’t see around the corner. Like you can’t see…the ship goes off to sea and it disappears; it hasn’t dropped off the Earth, it’s the curvature of space. Well, time is curved just as space is curved, and so things disappear in time. We see them disappear in space by the curvature of space. Well, they disappear in time but it’s only curved, and they’re turning. But the wheels are wheels within wheels. So you see a large wheel, when will it be turned? And man has no memory. “So is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See this is new’? It has been already, in ages past. But there’s no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after among those who come later.” For there is nothing new under the sun, and how difficult that is to tell to anyone who knows in his own short little span of time that he’s never seen this before.

I say, with anyone living in this world today, born when I was born, where we had candle light, and then we had oil lamps, and we had gas lamps, these little gas mantles, and then came the day we had electricity. So I go back in my short space of time of fifty-nine years back to my grandmother’s day or your great-grandmother’s day. For your great-grandmother can’t go back beyond the time that I go back in my fifty-nine years, for I was put into a different space down the wheel. The space on which I was placed on this wheel of the same age, the 20th century, was so limited that my background would take you back, in your more marvelous way, back into the 19th century. I wasn’t born then. I was born in 1905. Well, 1905 is the space where I was placed on the wheel, goes back in the comforts of life back into, well, say 1850. Can I not see them now cleaning the chimneys and cleaning all these things and all outdoor plumbing. That was Barbados, where the kitchen was on the floor, I mean the floor, the earth; I don’t mean wood. And so, that is the space of the same wheel. So there are wheels within wheels within wheels. And then man is lifted off the wheel.

So when you have the experience, go back into the ancient scripture and seek and seek and seek. A great help is the Concordance, Strong’s Concordance, and take Strong’s Concordance, take a word and look it up. Don’t take anything for granted, just look it up and see what it means. Take the word resurrection, for instance, and you think in terms of resurrection as someone resurrected physically. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. The word, as defined in the Bible, in the Concordance, means “to rise up; to stand upright; to awake from sleep.” Read it—-to awake from sleep. Well, I know in my own case exactly what happened: I awoke from sleep. But the awakening was something entirely different: It was the inauguration of the grand unfolding of God’s plan of salvation. For, that was the first event, and on the heels of it came the child, and the men who saw the symbol called the child, and I took the child. And then, after that, came the others, one after the other.

So, resurrection as defined is “to awake from sleep.” But I didn’t know I was asleep until that moment in time. I always thought I went to bed at night and woke in the morning, so when I woke in the morning I was awake. I didn’t know that until that moment in time back in 1959 I had been sound asleep, and sound asleep in a tomb where someone placed me there because to them I must have been dead. For, you’re placed in a tomb only because you’re dead. So everyone in this world who is walking through the world, who will make their exit from this world, are just as sound asleep; and they are to those who behold this death, dead. So Blake tells us of the great eternal ones who contemplate death and say, “What seems to be to them, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of despair and eternal death; but divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus” (Blake,Jer.,Plt.36).

So he awakens that body, and as it awakens, then these things begin to unfold within him, and the very first act is the resurrection. That inaugurates the entire process: His resurrection from the dead; then comes his birth from above; then comes his discovery of the fatherhood of God through the son called David; then his ascent into heaven in serpentine form; and then the descent of the dove who smothers him with affection, which is he never in eternity will leave him, it smothers him and remains upon him. And everyone goes through the identical experience. So this is God’s plan of salvation. Everyone will be saved, for the simple reason everyone is now being occupied by God. God is only redeeming himself. And before he entered into the wheels that turn, he had planned his own pathway of return and his return is simply the development of his own creative power.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Q & A

Q:

I have two questions. First, on this wheel of recurrence is there any retention of spiritual progress? And, secondly, what authority is behind the Bible Concordance so that one would know that they were reading something…

A:

Alright, first of all, take the second. James Strong’s Concordance which is called the exhaustive concordance,

I personally think of the many concordances that I have that it is the greatest, the most exact translation of the original meaning of the words. He spent forty years compiling it, it was not done overnight. And he took these ancient manuscripts and compared them and compared them and compared them, and came up, after forty years, with this fantastic work. And it is truly an exhaustive concordance.

( NOTE FROM LIVINGWELLNESS: There are MANY translations and MANY sources now. Interlinear translation, Bible Study Tools, Logos Apostolic etc . In Nevilles era, the internet did not exist, and at the time he was correct, but Strong’s concordance is no longer the only source.)

So, if you…you don’t need to know Greek or Hebrew because you simply look up the little number that is next to the word. You look the word up in English, at the extreme end of the column you find a little number; then you turn, if it’s a Hebrew word that is in the Old Testament, you look up the number in the Hebrew section; if it is in the New Testament, you look up the number in the Greek section.

And it simply defines the word for you as it was originally intended, because words change their meaning from year to year. Even in this century we have changed words; in fact, today more than ever we have what is known as newspeak. When the Russians use the word democracy they don’t mean what you and I mean, but everything is “democracy” there. You have no choice in the matter…you vote for one man, and you simply put your vote in and affirm what a very small minority will tell you the populace wants. That’s “democracy.” It’s not my concept of it, yet they use the word all day long. And so, all through the world words change their meanings, and so we go back to the original intention of the prophet when he used the word. But I find that James Strong’s Concordance gives me the best light on these words.

Now to come back to your first question again…

Q:

I asked if you’re on this wheel of recurrence is there any retention of spiritual progress?

A:

My dear, by the vision of this gentleman and his mother, certainly there was infinite joy, beauty beyond measure. He said, “All the pictures of my mother taken of her when she was a young girl and a young lady don’t compare to the beauty of my mother today. I wanted so much to share her beauty and her joy with my brother Art and my father, but the interruptions, the people came through; and then circumstances changed and I couldn’t pump her with enough questions.” Yet she was quite willing to answer these questions. So there’s a certain retention, because God is simply not a God of retribution, he’s a God of love.

God is infinite love. And the only purpose is to go through this play and to come out as the one who is the author of the play and then the actor in the parts. God plays all the parts.

Q:

In the 65th and 66th of Psalm 78, the Lord God awakes, and chose Judah and chose David, do we hear of Judah as judgment?

A:

Well, Judah means “praise.” But Judah—bear in mind, there are so many facets of it—-Judah is the fourth son of Jacob, and Jacob is the little one that she said he regretted and Jacob began to expand.

The word means “to expand without limit”. No limit to the expansion of the little one who comes out to expand as God. He was contracted to the limit, and now as he breaks the shell, as Blake brings out, “At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” But now you can’t limit him to the little one who broke the shell. Let him expand forever and forever without limit until some future date when he conceives a new play of contraction for the purpose of developing his creative talent, and then break it once more, and then expand forever and forever. But, Judah is the fourth, and as we told you the last time, the fourth doesn’t necessarily mean the fourth child of the womb of woman. It could be the fourth in your class, the fourth that came through the door tonight, the fourth in any sense, the fourth into a restaurant. I mean four, four means “the door.” It’s the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is Daleth.

He said, “I am the door. Anyone who comes through any other way is a thief and a robber.” One must go through simply by having the experience themselves. And so, I am…when he called me, he didn’t say “Neville is my father,” he called me Father. And I didn’t say, “So Neville is your father,” I said, “I am.” It’s “I am your Father.”

So, I am the door. He was standing against an open door, and there’s this open door, and David is looking out upon a pastoral scene. Here was the symbol of the door and he calls me Father, but he doesn’t say Neville. I don’t speak of so-and-so as his father, I am his father. You will say not “Tom is his father,” I am his father.

Everyone will say “I am his father.” So he calls us Father and that I am the door. The door is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Daleth. He said, I am the door; anyone who comes in towards the sheepfold in any other way is a thief and a robber (John 10:9). And he was looking out on a pastoral scene, and he’s called the shepherd. For when they came to get him, they said, he’s out with his flocks and he said, “I will not sit down until you bring him in, bring him in. And as he was brought in, the voice of the Lord said, “That is he. Rise and anoint him” (1 Sam. 16:12).

The Lord’s anointed, his Son, who calls you Father, therefore, you are the Lord. He calls you Father; therefore, everyone must have it themselves. If they don’t have it themselves, then they’re still on the wheel, and they’ll make extravagant claims and all kinds of things because there are false prophets in the world, too. As told us in Ezekiel and Jeremiah:

There are those who will not feed my sheep. They’ll feed my sheep only to take from my sheep to fatten themselves. And so, they make all the false claims in the world—-that they are sent, that they are this, they are the other—-and they are all thieves and robbers, speaking without experience and not believing one word of scripture. But this is a nice little gimmick as far as they’re concerned. But that’s part of the play too. Let them go…they’ll make their little exit, and all people their exit, and then they move automatically without choice on their part into that wheel necessary for their awakening, whatever it is.

Q:

Does the word valley have any significance?

A:

Valley?

Q:

___(?) any similar word to valley?

A:

Certainly. The Bible is full of the use of the word valley.

We go down to the valley of death. The dark convolutions of the brain are called valleys and out of that we come. I would have said of everyone here, don’t despair, don’t despair because God has planned your redemption, everyone’s redemption.

I would only plead with you to be honest, rather die than be dishonest about it. If you can’t explain it, alright, be quiet. Don’t have to explain it. If someone asks of you and you can’t explain it, don’t make up something, just, alright, be quiet.

You have your belief, you believe that this is God’s plan of redemption, well, believe it! And if some wiseacre tries to dethrone you through argument, alright, leave him alone, perfectly alright. That’s what the Sadducee tried when he said, “Master, (this is the story)…whose wife is she?” and he thought he could dethrone him. So I would say to everyone, don’t be concerned; just live in hope that this will quickly awaken within you.

I’m thrilled beyond measure, an audience of this size, when this morning’s mail could bring me three letters—-one I didn’t touch tonight it’s too long—-from three young fellas in this audience. Well, why, what percentage is that of these visions? If they enclosed in this morning’s mail a large big check, may I tell you, it couldn’t be equal to their letters. If they wrote me a letter where they thanked me for my time here and enclosed a large check, that couldn’t compensate. That would be nothing compared to the letter that they wrote in which they told me their vision and shared with me their visions. That’s wealth beyond the wildest dream of this world…that vision of three young men in an audience the size of this.

,more neville goddard!

EVEN more neville goddard!

Neville Goddard’s Library Of Books: A Collection of 11 popular books

Neville Goddard was born in Barbados on February 19, 1905, to Joseph Nathaniel and Wilhelmina Goddard. He immigrated to New York City c. 1922, where he initially worked as a ballet and ballroom dancer.In 1931, he began to study under an Ethiopian rabbi named Abdullah, who introduced him to Kabbalah

Neville Goddard teaches us that the human creates reality just by imagining rather than trying to change outside circumstances, that it is only the creation of the mind of what you desire, as well as everything you see, is created by the mind first whether you are conscious of it or not. IMAGINATION IS YOUR PERSONAL GOD.

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Neville Goddard Radio Lecture 7 | Stone, Water or Wine

January 8, 2024

Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles

It has been my privilege and pleasure to address Dr. Frederick Bailes’ Sunday audiences in the past few years. Today, I am to extend the privilege in speaking to you, his unseen audience of the radio. This will be a very practical series of talks for my subjects will be drawn largely from the Bible, the most spiritual of all books.

And I am firmly convinced that whatever is most profoundly spiritual is, in reality, most directly practical. All mistakes made in Biblical interpretation come from referring statements of which the intention is spiritual and mystical, and implying principles or states to times, persons or places. In one sense, not one work of Scripture is true according to the letter. Yet, I say that every word is true; but the Scriptures are true only as He intended them that spoke them; they are true as God meant them, not as man will have them.

A spiritual and symbolical interpretation alone yields truth, whilst a literal acceptation
profits nothing. The Bible contains historical elements, but these are always used as picture
language of great ideas. The Gospel narrative is to be studied in order that we may know. It does not convey knowledge immediately. Getting to know is a gradual process – a progressive inner experience. God reveals Himself within us as we are able to receive Him. The deep meanings have always been recognized partially by a few, as will be found by consulting the writings of the seers of all past ages.

In assigning to the Bible its proper meaning, it is necessary to remember that as mystical
Scriptures it deals primarily, not with material things or persons, but with spiritual significations. The Bible is addressed not to the outer sense or reason, but to the soul. Its object is not to give a historical account of physical life, but to exhibit the spiritual possibilities of humanity, at large, for religion is not in its nature historical and dependent upon actual sensible events, but consists in processes such as Faith and Redemption. These, being interior to all men, subsist irrespective of what any particular man has at any time done.

The perennial value of the Bible is its symbolic value. There are great controversies as to what is and what is not historical in the Bible, but let us remember that if we could settle all the historical questions tomorrow, that would not give us religion, nor would it give the Bible a biding value. Everything depends upon our finding the symbolical value of the facts. A fact of past history has nothing in it for present day religion unless it stands forth as a symbol of a Reality behind itself.

The Bible is a revelation of Truth expressed in Divine symbolism. From the literal point of view,
the wording may sometimes be confusing; it is the symbolism, alone, which is precious and
worthy of our best efforts to elucidate. All Scripture was written from the inward mystery and
not with a mystical sense put into it. The stories conceal an underlying meaning, and the task of scripture interpretation is to discover these psychological truths which are expressed in this symbolism.

We, here, are not concerned with the surface meaning of the Scripture, whether it be
reasonable or absurd, for in no case does it constitute the inner truth we are seeking. Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personification for persons, allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself. and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended.

In most of the little things of life, this confusion is of trivial consequence. But the error which arises when you carry the confusion into questions of greater moment, such as religion, assumes gigantic proportions. For centuries, men have sought eagerly for bits of evidence which might be related to the happenings described in the Bible. While most people believe that its characters lived, no proof of their lives on earth has ever been found and may never be found.

This is unimportant for the ancient teachers were not writing history, but an allegorical picture lesson of certain basic principles, which they clothed in the garb of history.

The form of the various stories of the Bible is as distinct from its substance as the form of a grain of wheat is distinct from the life germ within it. As the assimilative organs of the body
discriminate between food that can be built into the physical system and food that must be cast off, so do the awakened intuitive faculties discover, beneath allegory and parable, the
psychological life germ, and feeding on this, they cast off the fiction which conveyed it. The
Bible is the largest selling book in this country. It is probably the least read and certainly the
least understood.

Throughout the Bible, the symbols of stone, water and wine are used. The stones of the Bible are its literal truths. The Ten Commandments, we are told, were written on stone. The water of the Bible is the psychological meaning hidden in these literal truths of stone.”I give you living waters,” that is, the inner knowledge that can make these stories a living reality in your life. The wine you must make for yourself through the wise use of this living water or psychological truth. This is an absolute necessity to the truly religious man. This is what Sir
Walter Scott meant when he said, “Man’s greatest education is that which he gives to himself.”

On Sunday morning, I shall speak on, “Are You Stone, Water or Wine?” I shall be taking Dr.
Bailes’ service at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega.

When you hear this message, you may ask yourselves, “Are you stone, water or wine?” You may judge whether your understanding of the Bible is merely literal, psychological, or truly spiritual and, therefore, profoundly practical.

The Bible is, from beginning to end, all about transcending the violence which characterizes
mankind’s present level of being. It affirms the possibility of a development of another level of
being surmounting violence. The point of view taken is that the goal of man is this inner
development, which is the only real psychology.

To take the Bible away from its central idea of rebirth, which means an inner evolution and implies the existence of a higher level, is to understand nothing of its real meaning. The Word of God, that is, the psychological teaching in the Bible, is to make a man different, first in thought and then in being, so that he becomes a new man or is born again.

Whenever an entirely new attitude enters into a person’s life, psychological rebirth to some
extent has occurred. Man wants to be better, not different. The Bible speaks, not of being better, but of another man, a man reborn. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God…” “Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.”” (John 3.)

The Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone for those incapable of seeing any deeper meaning. Stone represents the most external and literal form of spiritual truth, and water refers to another way of understanding the same truth. Wine or spirit is the highest form of understanding it.

“Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” wrote John Smith, the
Cambridge Platonist. “The God of the moralist is before all things a great judge and
schoolmaster; the God of Science is impersonal and inflexible Vital Law; the God of the savage is the kind of chief he would be himself if he had the opportunity.” No man’s conduct will be higher than his conception of God, and his conception of God is determined by the kind of man he, himself, is. “For such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” and what is true of man’s concept of God is equally true of man’s concept of God’s Word, the Bible. It will be to him what he is to himself.

“God is God from the creation,
Truth alone is man’s salvation;
But the God that now you worship
Soon shall be your God no more
For the soul in its unfolding
Evermore its thoughts remolding,
Learns more truly in its progress
How to love and to adore.”

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REMAIN FAITHFUL TO YOUR IDEA | Neville Goddard Lesson 5

July 19, 2023

REMAIN FAITHFUL TO YOUR IDEA | A Neville Goddard Lecture (Lesson 5)

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LESSON 1

LESSON 2

LESSON 3

LESSON 4

LESSON 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On my return home that day I overheard a doorman say to a delivery man, “You can’t leave that there.” As I was about to take the elevator up to my apartment, I was attracted by a familiar face in the restaurant, and as I looked in the hostess greeted me with a smile. That night I escorted my dinner guests to the elevator and as I said good-bye to them, the night operator waved good-night to me.

By simply rearranging a few of the single sensory impressions I was destined to encounter, and by fusing two or more of them into single sensory impressions, I constructed a dream which differed quite a bit from my waking experience.

When we have learned to control the movements of our attention in the four-dimensional world, we shall be able to consciously create circumstances in the three-dimensional world. We learn this control through the waking dream, where our attention can be maintained without effort, for attention minus effort is indispensable to changing the future. We can, in a controlled waking dream, consciously construct an event which we desire to experience in the three-dimensional world.

The sensory impressions we use to construct our waking dream are present realities displaced in time or the four-dimensional world. All that we do in constructing the waking dream is to select from the vast array of sensory impressions those, which, when they are properly arranged, imply that we have realized our desire.

With the dream clearly defined we relax in a chair and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. A state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention. Then we experience in imagination what we would experience in reality were this waking dream an objective fact.

In applying this technique to change the future it is important always to remember that the only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is THE WAKING DREAM, the predetermined action and sensation which implies the fulfillment of our desire. How the waking dream becomes physical fact is not our concern. Our acceptance of the waking dream as physical reality wills the means for its fulfillment.

Let me again lay the foundation of prayer, which is nothing more than a controlled waking dream:

1. Define your objective, know definitely what you want.

2. Construct an event which you believe you will encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant — an event which implies the fulfillment of your desire.

3. Immobilize the physical body and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, until the single sensation of fulfillment dominates the mind; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW so that you experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now to realize your goal. Experience has convinced me that this is the easiest way to achieve our goal.

However, my own many failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the movements of my attention. But I can, with the ancient teacher, say:

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.” Phil. 3:13,14

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Again I want to remind you that the responsibility to make what you have done real in this world is not on your shoulders. Do not be concerned with the HOW, you have assumed that it is done, the assumption has its own way of objectifying itself. All responsibility to make it so is removed from you.

There is a little statement in the book of Exodus which bears this out. Millions of people who have read it, or have had it mentioned to them throughout the centuries have completely misunderstood it. It is said, “Steep not a kid in its mothers milk.” (King James version, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk.” Exodus 23:19).

Unnumbered millions of people, misunderstanding this statement, to this very day in the enlightened age of 1948, will not eat any dairy products with a meat dish. It just is not done.

They think the Bible is history, and when it says, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk,” milk and the products of milk, butter and cheese, they will not take at the same time they take the kid or any kind of meat. In fact they even have separate dishes with which to cook their meat.

But you are now about to apply it psychologically. You have done your meditation and you have assumed that you are what you want to be. Consciousness is God, your attention is like the very stream of life or milk itself that nurses and makes alive that which holds your attention. In other words, what holds your attention has your life.

Throughout the centuries a kid has been used as the symbol of sacrifice. You have given birth to everything in your world. But there are things that you no longer wish to keep alive, although you have mothered and fathered them. You are a jealous father that can easily consume, like Cronus, his children. It is your right to consume what formerly you expressed when you did not know better.

Now you are detached in consciousness from that former state. It was your kid, it was your child, you embodied and expressed it in your world. But now that you have assumed that you are what you want to be, do not look back on your former state and wonder HOW it will disappear from your world. For if you look back and give attention to it, you are steeping once more that kid in its mother’s milk.

Do not say to yourself, ‘I wonder if I am really detached from that state,” or “I wonder if so and so is true.” Give all your attention to the assumption that the thing is so, because all responsibility to make it so is completely removed from your shoulders. You do not have to make it so, it IS so. You appropriate what is already fact, and you walk in the assumption that it is, and in a way that you do not know, I do not know, no man knows, it becomes objectified in your world.

Do not be concerned with the how, and do not look back on your former state. “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

Simply assume that it is done and suspend reason, suspend all the arguments of the conscious three-dimensional mind. Your desire is outside of the reach of the three-dimensional mind.

Assume you are that which you wish to be; walk as though you were it; and as you remain faithful to your assumption — it will harden into fact.

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THE TWELVE DISCIPLES | a Neville Goddard lecture

August 24, 2022

THE TWELVE DISCIPLES | a Neville Goddard lecture

THE TWELVE DISCIPLES Neville Goddard

“And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Matt.10:1.

The twelve disciples represent the twelve qualities of mind which can be controlled and disciplined by man. If disciplined they will at all times obey the command of the one who has disciplined them.

These twelve qualities in man are potentials of every mind. Undisciplined their actions resemble more the actions of a mob than they do of a trained and disciplined army. All the storms and confusions that engulf man can be traced directly to these twelve ill-related characteristics of the human mind in its present slumbering state. Until they are awakened and disciplined they will permit every rumor and sensuous emotion to move them.

When these twelve are disciplined and brought under control the one who accomplishes this control will say to them, “Hereafter I call you not slaves but friends.” He knows that from that moment on each acquired disciplined attribute of mind will befriend and protect him.

The names of the twelve qualities reveal their natures. These names are not given to them until they are called to discipleship. They are: Simon, who was later renamed Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas.

The first quality to be called and disciplined is Simon or the attribute of hearing. This faculty, when lifted to the level of a disciple, permits only such impressions to reach consciousness as those which his hearing has commanded him to let enter. No matter what the wisdom of man might suggest or the evidence of his senses convey, if such suggestions and ideas are not in keeping with that which he hears, he remains unmoved. This one has been instructed by his Lord and made to understand that every suggestion he permits to pass his gate will, on reaching his Lord and Master (his consciousness), leave its impression there, which impression must in time become an expression.

The instruction to Simon is that he should permit only dignified and honorable visitors or impressions to enter the house (consciousness) of his Lord. No mistake can be covered up or hidden from his Master, for every expression of life tells his Lord whom he consciously or unconsciously entertained.

When Simon by his works proves himself to be a true and faithful disciple then he receives the surname of Peter or the rock, the unmoved disciple, the one who cannot be bribed or coerced by any visitor. He is called by his Lord Simon Peter, the one who faithfully hears the commands of his Lord and besides which commands he hears not.

It is this Simon Peter who discovers the I AM to be Christ, and for his discovery is given the keys to heaven, and is made the foundation stone upon which the Temple of God rests. Buildings must have firm foundations and only the disciplined hearing can, on learning that the I AM is Christ, remain firm and unmoved in the knowledge that I AM Christ and beside ME there is no savior.

The second quality to be called to discipleship is Andrew or courage. As the first quality, faith in oneself, is developed it automatically calls into being its brother, courage. Faith in oneself, which asks no man’s help but quietly and alone appropriates the consciousness of the quality desired and in spite of reason or the evidence of his senses to the contrary continues faithful patiently waiting in the knowledge that his unseen claim if sustained must be realized such faith develops a courage and strength of character that are beyond the wildest dreams of the undisciplined man whose faith is in things seen.

The faith of the undisciplined man cannot really be called faith. For if the armies, medicines or wisdom of man in which his faith is placed be taken from him, his faith and courage go with it. But from the disciplined one the whole world could be taken and yet he would remain faithful in the knowledge that the state of consciousness in which he abides must in due season embody itself. This courage is Peter’s brother Andrew, the disciple, who knows what it is to dare, to do and to be silent.

The next two who are called are also related. These are the brothers, James and John, James the just, the righteous judge, and his brother John, the beloved. Justice to be wise must be administered with love, ever turning the other cheek and at all times returning good for evil, love for hate, nonviolence for violence.

The disciple James, symbol of a disciplined judgment, must when raised to the high office of a supreme judge be blindfolded that he may not be influenced by the flesh nor judge after the appearances of being. Disciplined judgment is administered by one who is not influenced by appearances. The one who has called these brothers to discipleship continues faithful to his command to hear only that which he has been commanded to hear, namely, the Good. The man who has this quality of his mind disciplined is incapable of hearing and accepting as true anything either of himself or another which does not on the hearing fill his heart with love.

These two disciples or aspects of the mind are one and inseparable when awakened. Such a disciplined one forgives all men for being that which they are. He knows as a wise judge that every man perfectly expresses that which he is, as man, conscious of being. He knows that upon the changeless foundation of consciousness all manifestation rests, that changes of expression can be brought about only through changes of consciousness.

With neither condemnation nor criticism these disciplined qualities of the mind permit everyone to be that which he is. However, although allowing this perfect freedom of choice to all, they are nevertheless ever watchful to see that they themselves prophesy and do both for others and themselves only such things which when expressed glorify, dignify and give joy to the expresser.

The fifth quality called to discipleship is Philip. This one asked to be shown the Father. The awakened man knows that the Father is the state of consciousness in which man dwells, and that this state or Father can be seen only as it is expressed. He knows himself to be the perfect likeness or image of that consciousness with which he is identified. So he declares, “No man has at any time seen my Father, but I, the son, who dwelleth in his bosom have revealed him; therefore, when you see me, the son, you see my Father, for I come to bear witness of my Father.” I and my Father, consciousness and its expression, God and man, are one.

This aspect of the mind when disciplined persists until ideas, ambitions and desires become embodied realities. This is the quality which states “Yet in my flesh shall I see God.” It knows how to make the word flesh, how to give form to the formless.

The sixth disciple is called Bartholomew. This quality is the imaginative faculty, which quality of the mind when once awake distinguishes one from the masses. An awakened imagination places the one so awakened head and shoulders above the average man, giving him the appearance of a beacon light in a world of darkness. No quality separates man from man as does the disciplined imagination. This I is the separation of the wheat from the chaff. Those ~ who have given most to society are our artists, scientists, inventors and others with vivid imaginations.

Should a survey be made to determine the reason why so many seemingly educated men and women fail in their after-college years or should it be made to determine the reason for the different earning powers of the masses, there would be no doubt but that imagination played the important part. Such a survey would show that it is imagination which makes one a leader while the lack of it makes one a follower.

Instead of developing the imagination of man, our educational system often stifles it by attempting to put into the mind of man the wisdom he seeks. It forces him to memorize a number of textbooks which, all too soon, are disproved by later textbooks. Education is not accomplished by putting something into man; its purpose is to draw out of man the wisdom which is latent within him. May the reader call Bartholomew to discipleship, for only as this quality is raised to discipleship will you have the capacity to conceive ideas that will lift you beyond the limitations of man.

The seventh is called Thomas. This disciplined quality doubts or denies every rumor and suggestion that are not in harmony with that which Simon Peter has been commanded to let enter. The man who is conscious of being healthy (not because of inherited health, diets or climate, but because he is awakened and knows the state of consciousness in which he lives) will, in spite of the conditions of the world, continue to express health. He could hear through the press, radio and wise men of the world that a plague was sweeping the earth and yet he would remain unmoved and unimpressed. Thomas, the doubter when disciplinedÑwould deny that sickness or anything else which was not in sympathy with the consciousness to which he belonged had any power to affect him.

This quality of denial when disciplined protects man from receiving impressions that are not in harmony with his nature. He adopts an attitude of total indifference to all suggestions that are foreign to that which he desires to express. Disciplined denial is not a fight or a struggle but total indifference.

Matthew, the eighth, is the gift of God. This quality of the mind reveals man’s desires as gifts of God. The man who has called this disciple into being knows that every desire of his heart is a gift from heaven and that it contains both the power and the plan of its self-expression. Such a man never questions the manner of its expression. He knows that the plan of expression is never revealed to man for God’s ways are past finding out. He fully accepts his desires as gifts already received and goes his way in peace confident that they shall appear.

The ninth disciple is called James the son of Alphaeus. This is the quality of discernment. A clear and ordered mind is the voice which calls this disciple into being. This faculty perceives that which is not revealed to the eye of man. This disciple judges not from appearances for it has the capacity to function in the realm of causes and so is never misled by appearances.

Clairvoyance is the faculty which is awakened when this quality is developed and disciplined, not the clairvoyance of the mediumistic seance rooms, but the true clairvoyance or clear seeing of the mystic. That is, this aspect of the mind has the capacity to interpret that which is seen. Discernment or the capacity to diagnose is the quality of James the son of Alphaeus.

Thaddaeus, the tenth, is the disciple of praise, a quality in which the undisciplined man is woefully lacking. When this quality of praise and thanksgiving is awake within man, he walks with the words, “Thank you, Father,” ever on his lips. He knows that his thanks for things not seen opens the windows of heaven and permits gifts beyond his capacity to receive to be poured upon him.

The man who is not thankful for things received is not likely to be the recipient of many gifts from the same source. Until this quality of the mind is disciplined, man will not see the desert blossom as the rose. Praise and thanksgiving are to the invisible gifts of God (one’s desires) what rain and sun are to the unseen seeds in the bosom of the earth.

The eleventh quality is Simon of Canaan. A good key phrase for this disciple is “Hearing good news.” Simon of Canaan, or Simon from the land of milk and honey, when called to discipleship, is proof that the one who calls this faculty into being has become conscious of the abundant life. He can say with the Psalmist David, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” This disciplined aspect of the mind is incapable of hearing anything other than good news and so is well qualified to preach the Gospel or Good-spell.

The twelfth and last of the disciplined qualities of the mind is called Judas. When this quality is awake man knows that he must die to that which he is before he can become that which he desires to be. So it is said of this disciple that he committed suicide,which is the mystic’s way of telling the initiated that Judas ; the disciplined aspect of detachment. This one knows that his I AM or consciousness is his savior, so he lets all other saviors go. This quality when disciplined gives one the strength to let go.

The man who has called Judas into being has learned how to take his attention away from problems or limitations and to place it upon that which is the solution or savior. “Except ye be born again you cannot in any way enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” “No greater love hath man than this, that he gives his life for a friend.” When man realizes that the quality desired, if realized, would save and befriend him, he willingly gives up his life (present conception of himself) for his friend by detaching his consciousness from that which he is conscious of being and assuming the consciousness of that which he desires to be.

Judas, the one whom the world in its ignorance has blackened, will when man awakes from his undisciplined state, be placed on high for God is love and no greater love has a man than this that he lay down his life for a friend. Until man lets go of that which he is now conscious of being, he will not become that which he desires to be; and Judas is the one who accomplishes this through suicide or detachment.

These are the twelve qualities which were given to man in the foundation of the world. Man’s duty is to raise them to the level of discipleship. When this is accomplished man will say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. I have glorified thee on earth and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine Own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

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MANY MANSIONS | A Neville Goddard Lecture | Quantum Jumping

May 20, 2022

MANY MANSIONS | Neville Goddard | Lecture |

July 16, 1969

Manifest love course | Specific Person | Soulmate Love | New Love | Restoration from break Up

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Tonight’s subject is: Many Mansions. You may be familiar with the subject from the 14th
chapter of the book of John: “Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe
also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told
you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again and
receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1-3, Moffatt’s
translation) Now, who is this one speaking? Scripture tells us it is Jesus Christ. The
chapter affirms it.

Arthur Chamber, who won the Nobel Prize in literature [Ed. Note: We found no record
of such an award.], said: “It takes a great imagination to follow Jesus Christ, and I, for
one, have been lacking in such imagination.” At least, he was big enough to confess it. I
have met many, when you begin to discuss Scripture with them, who will always ask one
simple question: “Have you read the New Testament in Greek?” Well, my confession is
always: “No, I do not, and cannot, read Greek.” Then, of course, they have that
supercilious attitude: “Well, then you haven’t read it in Greek! Isn’t that strange?”
This happened just about three months ago, and I said that is one of the questions that
Aldous Huxley asked me. He read it in Greek. I said to him what I said to this gentleman
who asked me: “Isn’t it peculiar? Aldous read it in Greek from the original. You read it in
Greek in the original.” (In this century he is really tops. He is gone from this world now.)
I said to him: “You know, Aldous, you read it in Greek and you read it in English, and yet
you don’t understand it.” So, you ask me: have I read it in Greek? No, I can’t read it in
Greek, but I’ve read it in English, and I understand it − understand it because I’ve
experienced it, and you haven’t. Well, the last time that question was asked me was
three months ago. He was perfectly still after I said to him: “You don’t understand it.”
So, what did his Greek do?

So tonight, we will go into this great mystery − for it is a mystery. Paul uses the word
“mystery” concerning this story of Christ no less than twenty-odd times. He said: “Great
is the mystery . . .”

All through his letters he is speaking of the mystery. It is not history, for history is not a
mystery; it is simply a record of the facts. Well, this is not a record of the facts of a
secular nature, for the Bible is not secular history. It’s salvation history.

So here, what are these “mansions” spoken of? They are states. All states are eternal,
and they exist now. All states exist in the human Imagination, and the human
Imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s God. There is no other God. And all things
exist in him now!

We have to make the adjustment: think of an infinite number of states − anything you
can think of – it exists now. Man passes through states, like a traveler who passes
through places, through cities.

Well, the man who is passing through a state, like the traveler who is passing through a
place, may suppose that the place that he has passed through exists no more, as a man
passing through a state thinks the state through which he has passed exists no more.
Wouldn’t it be silly when I leave this city to feel that because I have departed, that the
city has ceased to exist?

They remain for anyone to enter, and when they are in it, it seems to be the only reality
and everything else in the world seems a mere shadow. When you enter into a city or a
state, that state seems to be the only substance. Every state in the world exists now.
Now, the first creative act recorded in Scripture is in the second verse of the 1st chapter
of Genesis: “…and the Spirit of God moved…” Whatever takes place is that movement
within God. And God is our own wonderful, human Imagination. So whatever takes
place is simply movement within God.

How does He now move? That’s the secret: how to go into these states and make them
real, make them alive in our world. It’s a very simple process − very simple − but you
and I have to act to do it. It won’t do it itself; we have to do it. When we move into the
state and clothe ourselves with the state, the state then takes on an external tone and
becomes objective to our sight, as this room is now objective because we’re in it.
All these states are just as real as this room once we occupy them. So, “in my Father’s
house are many mansions,” numberless mansions. “Were it not so, would I have told
you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go…I will come again and receive
you to myself, that where I am, there ye shall be also.” (John 14: 2, 3)

As I stand here, my adjustment is only in my Imagination. I don’t walk into the place − I
don’t travel into it. I simply adjust it here: close my eyes to the obvious, and then assume
that it is here and clothe myself with the reality of the state of my selection. Now, I open
my eyes upon this room and this room denies the reality of what I’ve done in my
Imagination.

But wait – just wait! I can’t forget it and I can’t rub it out. It will take the place of this.
But why don’t I remember it? Every natural effect in this world has a spiritual cause, and
not a natural. A natural cause only seems; it is a delusion of the perishing vegetable
memory.
Man’s memory fades, and when he’s confronted with his own harvest he doesn’t
recognize his harvest. He denies that at any moment in time did he entertain vividly,
with emotion, such things that are happening in his world, because his memory fades
and he doesn’t remember. So, he questions the law (if he ever heard of it). He questions:
“How could this thing happen to me?” (Haven’t you heard that time and again?) Or have
your heard the statement: “Why should it happen to him? He is so nice. He is an
altogether wonderful chap. Why should it happen to him?”

Here’s a question, just before I left L.A. “Why should these things happen to Dad and to
Mother? Certainly you know, above all people, they don’t deserve it.”

It’s not a matter of deserving. These are states. At one moment in time they entertained
this with feeling, with intense feeling, and then these things happen.

And they might have passed judgment on one who had a similar condition, and relate
the condition to some unlovely thing they know of that person and think God was
getting even. Yet, they are ardent churchgoers, members of the church. One is on the
altar guild; the other is a trustee of the church. He’s a banker by profession. They really
devote themselves to the service of the church.
Well, what has that to do with one entertaining these emotions with feeling, intense
feeling, and then forgetting it, not knowing that the effect (when it takes place − and it is
a natural and a real effect) that it is related to a spiritual cause, and the spiritual cause is
nothing more than a motion within themselves.

Within themselves they move, and having moved, they are going to project that state
into which they fell, either wisely or unwisely. And when it comes into the world for
recognition they don’t recognize their own harvest. But there is no other way that it
could come into the world.

So, “The Spirit of God moved…” and then the whole vast world began to appear. He
moved. Now, motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another
object. If this very moment we were hurtled into space, all in the same motion, I
wouldn’t know, and you wouldn’t know, that we were moving. I can only detect motion
if I can observe a motion relative to an object that seems to be stationary relative to me.
And so, I must have a frame of reference against which I move.

So, the frame of reference: I stand here – I have a frame of reference. I have friends who
know (or think they know) where I stand in the world. They think they know what I
stand for, how I live, and that’s what they believe. Well, in my mind’s eye I see that
frame of reference, and then I let them see me differently. I didn’t go any place − I
allowed them to see me differently. Well, if they see me differently then I must have
moved.

So in my mind’s eye I construct a scene implying the fulfillment of my dream, and then
as I see it, I accept it as true and believe that they accept it as true of me. So I change it.
If I change it within myself and use that frame of reference, and the same reveals a
change in me, well then, I have moved. That is the secret of all creation in the world:
“And the Spirit of God moved.” And the minute He moved, things appeared. “Let there
be light.”

Let everything now that this is implying appear in my world, for the potency is in its
implication. Well, what does it imply − this motion? Well, it implies that they now see in
me what I would like them to see. As they see me in that light, I am actually saying
(without the use of words): “Let there be light on it now. Let it come into the world that
the whole world may see it.” See what? See the motion that I produced within myself.
For when we are told: “The Spirit of God moved,” that’s no more than your own
wonderful human Imagination moving relative to a frame of reference, and so you
move.
How is this taught in Scripture? It’s taught in the most beautiful manner. It’s told as a
story. These are not secular stories; these are profound truths.

Now, Rebecca conceives; she’s pregnant. Isaac prays that his wife will be given a child −
given a son − and the Lord responded, as we are told, and she conceived. Well, then
there was trouble within her womb, and she wondered: “Why should these things be? If
this is so, why should I live?”, for, there was a conflict within herself. And the Lord said
to her: “Two nations are within your womb, and two manners of people, born of you,
shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the
younger.” (This is told us in the 25th chapter of the book of Genesis.)

Now, as the story unfolds, the one comes out second, and he has no hair. His name is
Jacob, which means a “supplanter.” He supplants, he takes the place of the other. The
one that came out first was covered with hair all over. He is called Esau. Jacob supplants
him by deception. He deceives his father into believing that he was his son, Esau.
How did he do it? He clothed himself with hair and came to his father, and the father
said: “Your voice is the voice of Jacob. Come close, come near, that I may feel,” for the
father was blind. Isaac was blind, and he could not see. So he came near, and as he came
near and the father felt him, he said: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are
the hands of Esau,” and he blessed him. And when he blessed him he gave him the
birthright that belonged to the first son.

When the first son came in from the hunt, bringing what the father had requested −
venison − he said: “Who are you?” He said: “I am your son, Esau.” “Well,” he said, “I
have just blessed my son Esau.” He said: “That was Jacob,” the deceiver. (This is the
second time he has deceived him.) Then the father said, “I have blessed him, and I
cannot take back the blessing. You have to serve him.”

Well now, tell that story and what does it mean? Here is my Esau. You are my Esau. This
room is Esau. This is stronger than my subjective state. How stronger? This to me is the
utmost: I am here, and everything in my world that I can touch and see now and sense.
This is the strong, strong son − my surface. The subjective state is what? I can paint a
word picture of it, but that’s not real. But I’m going to make it real.

So I shut my eyes, and − closing my eyes to the facts of life, to the obvious things − I am
blind. So, Isaac was blind. I close my eyes; I don’t see it. Then I persuade myself that I
am what I would like to be, instead of what reason dictates and my senses dictate. Well,
in that projected state, I clothe myself with the other [although] I can’t accept it right
now.

Imagination is spiritual sensation. Now, take an object. I will just lead you in words.
Take a tennis ball in your imaginary hands and feel it. You can feel it. To show you the
difference, take a baseball. Can you discriminate between the two? Well now, take a
ping-pong ball. Can you discriminate between the three? If these are non-existent, you
couldn’t discriminate.

How can you say that these do not exist and say that you can tell the difference between
non-existent things? They do not, at the moment, exist in your outer mind’s senses –
they don’t. But they exist! All things exist now in the human Imagination. That’s where
you felt it; you felt it in your Imagination, and Imagination is spiritual sensation. Well
then, what does that mean? “I saw it in my mind’s eye, and I felt the three different
kinds of balls.” Well, what does it mean?

Well, now to test one. Take this and apply it to anything in the world. Apply it to
mountains; apply it to anything, and if you accept what you’ve done to test it in your
Imagination, just wait. “The vision has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower; if
it be long, then wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.” (Habakkuk 2:3, Moffatt’s
translation) It will come on time!

Let me share with you an experience of just a few months ago [of] this friend of mine − a
very marvelous chap − an executive in a very prominent advertising agency in Los
Angeles (he comes to all the meetings). Here are two short ones: He said, “I was driving
home, and then it dawned upon me: You know that April the fifteenth is just around the
corner, and you could do with some cash for Uncle Sam.”

Now, he receives a very large salary, but he spends it and he lives a lovely, generous life.
He has a lovely home and three children. He maintains a beautiful home, but he never
thought in terms of these moments in time when we are confronted with Uncle Sam’s
outstretched hand and he wants a part of what you earn. Well, you can’t say “No” to
him; you’ve got to pay him. So here comes around the corner the fifteenth of April, and
he could use some cash.

“Riding home,” he said, “this is what I did. I simply imagined, and I made a game of it. I
imagined that it was raining gently, but the rain was little green pieces of paper. It was
money coming gently upon me, and I could feel it − actually feel the gentle rain of paper
money dropping upon me, and I had stopped. I had done this for about two or three
minutes, [and] then the traffic demanded all of my attention and so I broke it.

When I went home that night I thought it was great fun and I’d try it again. I could feel it
actually descending upon me like a gentle rain. The next day was the fourteenth of April,
and sitting at my desk (not paying any attention to it, really) the boss comes in, and he
said to me: ‘You have a ten per cent raise and it’s retroactive as of the first of the month,’
and gave me a check for a ten per cent raise.” And he makes a very big salary.

So, ten per cent of a very large salary, and it was retroactive to the first of the month −
here, within a matter of moments, his feeling was granted as an actual fact! He didn’t
have it before he started, and now he has it. The vision came to flower at the appointed
hour. He needed it on the fifteenth and here, just before the fifteenth, a man comes
through with a check and tells him that it is retroactive to the first, at ten per cent
beyond what he got last month.

Now, this is a story that I have at home (at the hotel) in his own hand. He didn’t confine
me to some secrecy. He told it to me − not in confidence, but that I may share it with
others to encourage them to try it. “Now,” he said, “I went home a couple of months
before, and my wife began to tell me a very unlovely story − unlovely in the sense that
we love the little girl. She’s fourteen months old, and we know her grandmother well.
Of course we know the mother, but we are closer to the grandmother, and the
grandmother told my wife that the little girl began to develop bumps in her neck − little
swellings. So they took her to the hospital for observation. They made a biopsy and five
doctors brought in the negative verdict that it was malignant; it was cancer.”

Well, in a child of fourteen months that is fatal, because you are developing. You can
arrest cancer if you are my age because you are not building any more − and they drop
from this world by some other means – because at my age if I was told I had cancer, it
doesn’t mean that that will be the cause of my future departure from this world.
For I am not building any longer; I am just holding my own. Well, a little child of
fourteen months builds rapidly, so whatever is in her is building rapidly. With cancer, in
no time they are gone. So the grandmother was scared; the mother was scared.
But as his wife was telling my friend, he said: “I allowed her voice to tell me completely
different. I heard just enough. She kept on talking, but she didn’t know from my
expression that I wasn’t listening. I didn’t hear one word after I heard what she said, and
as she kept on building the picture, her voice faded from me. And then I reconstructed
what she said, and I had her tell me that the whole thing was false.

Although there were five doctors, each agreeing that this thing was malignant and
therefore fatal, I let it fade completely and brought in a complete reversal of that
verdict.”

Now the grandmother asked that they keep the child a little longer at the hospital that
they could still bring in another. So, they made another biopsy from a different section
of the neck. A sixth doctor was brought in. “I am sorry to disagree with my men in the
profession, but it is not malignant and it is not cancer.” They then were called in to make
a third, and they confessed that they were wrong because she couldn’t possibly have had
cancer and today not have cancer.

So they had to justify it. They could not for one moment; they confessed they were
wrong. He said: “That’s all right with me. The child now lives and she has no cancer.
Why should I go out and tell them: No, they were right in the first time, but prayer to the
only God that exists can make all things possible? With God, all things are possible, but
you don’t know who God is, so you believe in your technique. It’s perfectly all right.”
He said: “Now, my wife told me exactly what I knew.” The grandmother is now telling it
all over the neighborhood, and now they look upon me as a miracle man – which is
unfortunate, because it will make life difficult for me in the neighborhood.”

He said: “I’m no miracle man; I simply learned through you who God is. And if all things
are possible to God, and God is my own Imagination, can’t I imagine what I want to
imagine and persuade myself of the reality of the state imagined? Well, I did, and the
child now is free of what they called cancer. But to justify their own decision and not
say: ‘Well, we were wrong,’ they now say it could not have been cancer or therefore she
could not have overcome it.”

So, here is that story I’ve just told you, plus the raise in salary, and unnumbered things
the man lives by. He is not interested in the Promise. Well that’s all right. He’s a
businessman, and he has to pay rent, buy clothes for his children and his wife and
himself. And he’s more interested in the Law, and so he’s always writing these stories
concerning the Law.

If perchance I get off and week after week, I’m stressing the Promise, I can see Dick –
that night he isn’t going to come. Well, it doesn’t interest him but it’s perfectly all right,
because we’re living in the world of Caesar, and we’ve got to master this Law and not
pass the buck and blame others for the things that are happening in our world, for in my
Father’s house are unnumbered mansions.

It sets me now on my feet to become discriminating, to become selective. Into what
mansion will I go this night? Into what state of consciousness will I go this night? For, if
I occupy it, even though I forget it tomorrow, it will not be forgotten. I have planted the
seed, and in time – and on time – it will come up as a harvest. Whether I recognize my
own planting or not, it’s coming into my world. So, why not devote some time every day
to planting lovely things in this world?

People will say: “Well, all right – thorns are real, aren’t they?” Oh, yes, thorns are real,
but aren’t roses real too? Do you want to go out and really pluck thorns – or roses? If I
am going to dwell on the thorns, well, I will trade it and leave it for a flower for the Son
of Man. Why can’t I think in terms of roses? I’m not denying that thorns are real.
The things you see in the headlines, all these things –“Nixon declares war,” or
something, why couldn’t they’ve told that same story differently, for in man’s mind the
word war has a certain association? Big headlines: “Nixon Declares War” on something.
Another paper more modestly tells it, and they will say: “Nixon Takes Issue” with this,
that, and the other. But no, we have to simply frighten the reader to make him buy the
paper.

If he’s declared war, you will read the second line in smaller print, because you might
think he’s declared war on Russia. So, the big headline, and then you read what he is
really concerned about – some little issue.

So here in my Father’s house are these unnumbered mansions, numberless states of
consciousness.

Learn to discriminate between the man and his present state, so that you
meet someone and he’s a wonderful being, and in your eyes he seems so just and so
honest. Another one is despicable. But when you know they are only states, you will
actually see that you “do not consider either the just or the wicked to be the supreme
state, but to be, every one of them, states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its
deadly dreams of good and evil.” (Wm. Blake, from “The Last Judgment”)

So the one who is now so just – he may not be conscious of the fact that he has moved
into that state literally, and therefore really is a just man, for he is only expressing the
state in which he has placed himself. He might have been placed in that state
deliberately, or accidentally.

If it is done deliberately − good! Then he’ll know how to get out of it and to continue in
all the lovely states in this world. But if he fell into it, appearing as a just man, he could
easily fall out of it, and then tomorrow you will read in the paper where he is not so just
after all.

So when I know that these are only states…you don’t save men, for in every man there is
God, and God-in-man is man’s own wonderful, human Imagination. But if he doesn’t
know that he will say, as most people say, “Oh, it’s just my imagination. It means
nothing. It means absolutely nothing. I can imagine whatever I want because I didn’t do
it,” – he doesn’t know he’s going to do it.

You dwell upon a thing for a long while and make it real, so you’re always coming back
to it. That state to which I most often return constitutes my dwelling place. You’ll find a
certain person – after a little while, he’s always talking on a certain subject, and he’s
coming back to it and back to it and back to it.

He may be talking about poverty, and always talking poverty. Well then, follow him. He
moves his home, he moves his job − he moves everything, because the state to which I
most constantly return constitutes the place where I dwell. So follow my Imagination.
Where does it dwell most often in the course of a day? That’s my dwelling place.

Well, you can start now, and for twenty-four hours dwell in security – not security from
the government, because…no, you have it, you’ve earned [it], either through your talent
or in some normal but dignified manner. You didn’t steal it; you have it in a marvelous
way. Well then, you dwell upon that state and feel what it would be like if it were true.
For you see: when the man was blind, he emphasized the one thing, which seemed to be
the easiest of all senses actually to apply: that’s feeling. He said: “Come close, my son,
that I may feel you.” He couldn’t see him; he was blind. He did use another sense, called
“smell.” He said: “You smell and you feel like my son Esau.” Esau had hair all over him.
Well, isn’t that the most external thing in the world? The first thing you encounter of a
man is hair. You may not even see it, but under the microscope we are all, like a monkey,
completely covered with hair.

Now, the other one had no hair. He’s left completely subjective. So one comes out into
the world covered with hair, and you have a lengthy [word] picture of a boy with hair all
over. It hasn’t a thing to do with a little child who came into this world covered with
hair! It means the external world, for that is the most external thing in the world.
When you read that John the Baptist came and he had a girdle made of leather and he
wore a shirt of hair, it isn’t a man with a girdle of leather and a camel’s hair coat. That
tells you that his story is external. All that he has to say is completely external: “Thou
shalt not.” In other words, he came neither to eat nor drink, and his whole world was
one of bias against his own appetites.

So he felt that by doing violence to himself he could gain the Kingdom of Heaven. Then
we are told by the one who had no hair: “Christ in you is subjective,” and he said: “John
the Baptist and all those born of women, none is greater than John the Baptist:
nevertheless, I say, the least in the Kingdom is greater than John.” (Matthew 11:11) He
was the greatest of all. He was pure beyond measure, doing violence to his appetites. In
his own mind he was a just and noble man, but “the least in the kingdom is greater than
he,” because he represents the external world.

And we are told Elijah was… [Ed. text missing in transcript] but Elijah was John, who
was Elijah-come-again. Well, Elijah clothed himself with the camel’s hair, and he, too,
wore the girdle of leather, for he represents that state of mind. And you’ll find people in
the world who are trying to get into the kingdom by doing violence to their appetites.
They are strict vegetarians. They are strict this, strict that, and they really feel they
should become a celibate or should order themselves so that they will not become
disturbed, as so many priests have done – and that means that they are now pure
people. Pure nothing.

In this world of ours, live a noble life in the garment that God gave you. Whatever it is,
live it. And in your mind’s eye, appropriate all the lovely things in the world. You have to
pay rent, you have to buy clothes, to buy food; and if you get married and have a family,
they are your responsibility while they are young. All right − all that is yours. There’s no
need to blame anyone if you don’t have enough.

Appropriate it, for all the states exist now. But where? They all exist in your own
wonderful, human Imagination. And all you do is adjust. Well, where do you go to
adjust? Standing just where you are, you adjust. Wherever you are, you adjust to the
state desired. So, he’s riding home in his car and money is falling on him − gently
falling, green money – and then in a matter of moments he gets a raise.

Why did that man have the impulse to give him a ten per cent raise? Because he
appropriated it. You can work for a firm, as you know, all your life and it would never
occur to the boss to give you a raise. And going in and begging him for it isn’t going to do
it. You’ve got to appropriate it first, and then let him think that he initiated it and give it
to you.

I had a mother who understood this law beautifully. Mother wanted to come to this
country on a vacation, and she would appropriate it. She would actually…in those days
you didn’t buy dresses. You brought your dressmaker home and you selected the cloth
and she would make you dresses. She had all her dresses made. My father was busy in
the business world. He knew nothing of this daily activity of my mother − having all
these dresses made. And she appropriated the trip to New York City while physically she
was in the little island of Barbados.

Then my father would come home and say: “You know − I don’t want you here. You
don’t look very well. You look tired, and so I’ve just booked you for New York City, and
you are sailing next week. All you have to do now is go and get a visa, because you are
sailing next week and you are going to be there three months.” She would protest: “Oh,”
she said, “No, Joseph, that’s so expensive. You shouldn’t do it.” Well, she already did it!
She knew exactly what she was doing, but he wanted that feeling of one who was being
generous, and she knew that he was the man of the house and if he did all these lovely
things for her it would be nicer – it would make him feel that he was so generous. And
so she pleased him by protesting, when in her heart of hearts she knew exactly what she
was doing.

So I say: Do it all in your wonderful Imagination. She would not have done it, if for one
moment she thought he couldn’t afford it, because she loved him and she loved the
children she bore him. But why deprive him of the ability to do it or the desire to do it?
Allow him full freedom to have the money to pay for it and the desire to do it. He could
have had much more and not have the desire to do it. But she didn’t argue with him.
She simply appropriated the trip and “lived” in New York City. And as she did it, he had
the brilliant idea to send her to New York City. And you wonder: How did it happen? It
couldn’t happen unless some one moved in Imagination.

Whatever takes place is but movement within God, and God is your Imagination! So you
can move from one state to another in the twinkling of an eye. You don’t need to sit
down and burst a blood vessel; you simply do it in the twinkling of an eye. And if you do
it with acceptance − with complete acceptance, no doubt as to your Imagination’s ability
to externalize it – it will externalize it. As we told you last night, the definition of faith is
simply the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. You appropriate it
subjectively and then it becomes the objective fact.

So, these are the stories told us in Scripture. So when Chambers said: “It takes great
imagination to follow Jesus Christ, and I, for one, have been lacking in such
imagination”…but he was right, in spite of his own position in his own town, a French
town. And he made his exit from this world as a young man. Many of the great liberals
of the world already quote him, but they will not quote that passage from his works, that
he was inadequate to follow the mystery of Jesus Christ.

It takes a great Imagination to follow him, because Jesus Christ is your Imagination, not
something external to you. He’s in you. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”
is what we are asked in Corinthians. (II Corinthians 13:5) Do you not know it? As though
it would have changed! Man, whose life is Jesus Christ, doesn’t even know the source of
his own life, that the foundation of his own being is Jesus Christ. That’s the reality of
man.

And he doesn’t know that reality. Well, I’ll tell you who he is: his own wonderful, human
Imagination. And you accept it, and you will know all these mansions are only states of
consciousness. They are all states of consciousness.

Now, when you go into any state and dwell in it and return to it often in the course of a
day, you are dwelling in it, and you will find yourself dwelling there, not only for today,
but it will become a habit. And as it becomes a habit, it becomes externalized, and that’s
the world. That then becomes your Esau. That then becomes your reality. That becomes
the stronger of the two sons.

It was once the weak one, and the minute you clothe him with reality and he becomes
real, then you may forget it. As it becomes real, you may forget that that was once only a
subjective state. As it takes on now objective tones, you may not remember how you got
out of the former state into this if you desire it and never despair, for we started with the
statement: “Let not your heart be troubled.” (John 14:1) Quite often you will find these
words appearing in different – as we say – guise: “Be not afraid”; “Fear not”; “Be not
troubled”; “Be not anxious.”

If you could remove fear from that, you remove all the titles of the world. If you are not
afraid (and they couldn’t make you afraid; if you know who God is, they can’t make you
afraid) – if you know who you really are, no man can make you afraid. For within you
the power of powers is present, and that power is Jesus Christ. Is he not described in
Scripture as the “power of God,” in the very first chapter of I Corinthians? “Christ, the
power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Corinthians 1:24) Paul saw no other. He only
saw the power of God and the wisdom of God. As the poet said:

From the first – Power One –
I knew. Life has taught me
That; but for a closer view
Love were as close as He.

Yes, this I knew: Power One. That I knew, and in my own vision, I can tell you, they
come together.

When love embraced me, there was man – infinite love as man. When I was
commissioned and sent into this world to tell the story, it was power that sent me. But
your being, your Imagination, is a protean being. It can assume any shape, any form, in
the twinkling of an eye.

So the one who embraced me as love was the very one who sent me, but when he sent
me, he wore the garb of might. He wore the garb of power. His first revelation to man
was as power: El Shaddai, God Almighty. He said: “I made myself known unto Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, God Almighty; but unto you, I have made myself
known as I Am.” (Exodus 6:3) Then, in the end, he makes himself known as the Father.
But he first reveals his nature as power, and that’s what he was when I was sent. I looked
into his eyes and he didn’t move his throat − didn’t move his lips − but I heard every
word that he thought as he looked into my eyes. He looked into my eyes and thought,
and his thought was: “Time to act.” And then with these words: “Time to act,” I was
whirled out of that wonderful assembly and back upon my bed in this little garment of
flesh, with these words ringing in my ear.

But it was infinite might that sent me and yet infinite might was God Almighty, who was
one with the infinite love who embraced me. But he did not command me as love; he
commanded me as power. And so it is the same being; he is a protean being.

Proteus is simply the mythological god in the service of Neptune, who could assume any
shape that would serve the purpose of Neptune. He could be a fish; he could be
anything, if it served Neptune.

And so he could assume anything, as you do in a dream.

How do you manufacture all the symbolism of a dream? That’s you! You are assuming
all these wonderful symbols, all the images of a dream. It’s yourself doing it; and you are
clothing yourself in all the symbolism – whether it be animals, the fish, different names,
or even of a different sex, because you are protean and you can clothe yourself in
anything in the world.

But in my own case, it was power that commanded me, and I can still hear the words
ringing in my ear – and yet I can see before my eyes infinite love that embraced me.
When I fused, I fused – not with power, I fused with love, one with him, and I’ve never
been separated from that power that is love − never! When I feel myself, it is always that
same being that I saw.

And I am quite sure that anyone who could see (not through mortal eyes, but through
the awakened eyes of the risen Lord) would see that being as he looked at me, because
he who becomes one spirit with the Lord becomes one body, becomes one spirit. He who
is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him, and there is no divorce or
separation from that moment on.

But that body that he wears in the spiritual world cannot be seen by mortal eyes. Yet I
can feel it and sense it and know what it is, but it’s not this garment [indicating the
body]. This little garment will slowly wither away and depart this little life, but he within
me, who now wears it, will be that being with whom I fused back in 1959, for here in my
wonderful world are unnumbered mansions.

So you don’t have to condemn anyone who is in a state that he finds difficult to divorce
himself from. Tell him how to do it. Teach him how to do it. Don’t sympathize with him,
because if you sympathize with him, you are fixing that state all the more; but tell him
how to get out of the state. It is only a state!

Whether he be just or wicked, he’s only in a state, and if you could only take the so called
wicked man and persuade yourself that he is now a generous, kind, wonderful person,
he would have a change of heart and not know why he has it. Something will happen
within him, and he will become the kind and generous person that you have imagined
him to be. If you want him to be that kind of a person, imagine him to be it, and
persuade yourself of the reality of your own imaginary act, and he will conform to it.
My wife, back in 1945, when she left the Music Hall (she worked at the Music Hall for
eleven years as a costume designer, and the head producer used to treat her
unmercifully) …but I told her one day: “Darling, he couldn’t do anything for you unless
you allowed it. You actually feel that he is no earthly good. You feel that you are a
cultured American lady. You went to Smith College. You were born and raised in a lovely
environment. You never heard unkind things in your home. You never saw anything that
was cheap. Your mother had lovely taste, beautiful things.”

The interior was a beautiful, a huge, enormous home, with eight fireplaces, with every
floor beautifully furnished, and she was raised in that environment. She went only to
private schools, then off to Smith College, and then she worked in the Music Hall. Well,
her father was managing director of the Music Hall, so when she went in there, she did
not ask any favors because of her father’s position, and this man simply lorded it over
her.

She would say within herself (this she confessed to me): “Oh, you foreigner!” because he
came from Russia. And she mentally would remind him that she is an American by birth
for at least six or seven generations, and he came from Russia, and is now acting this
way. Well, that’s wrong. Whether he be a Russian or American, or English, or anything
else, we are all one.

“Now, stop it, and allow him to praise you for your work. He’s always condemning and
always criticizing. Walk to work. You only walk five blocks from where you live to the
Music Hall. Just imagine that he is not only praising you for your work, but he wants to
use all of your designs, and the budget will not allow it, so he goes to your father and
asks your father to increase the budget, that he may be allowed to use all the designs.
Your father’s a businessman, and he’s not going to do it. He’s going to cater neither to
you nor to him, but he has to run that at a profit for the Rockefellers. So, let him do it.
But in your Imagination assume that he does!” How long do you think it took for him to
actually change his attitude towards her?

I’ll tell you: twenty-four hours! When she came downstairs with this wonderful
collection of designs, he raved about them, and he actually went to her father and
begged him to increase the budget, that he may use them all. Her father would not allow
it. And from that day on, he changed his attitude toward her radically for the better.
Why? Because she changed hers towards him.

Are we not told in Scripture: “We love Him because He first loved us”? (1 John 4:19) You
want to be quite fair? Well, start it here. Start it in your own Imagination, and you’ll find
it responding on the outside, for the outer world only reflects the inner world. Start it
there first, or you will never see it in the outer world!

So, as she walked the street she simply imagined he walked with her, praising her for the
work that she had done. And in twenty-four hours he praised her, and [she] hoped her
father would increase the budget, that he could use all of them. And then she retired.
And after she retired in 1946, he begged her to come back and do special shows. She
went back and I think she did about six special shows for him.

Who would have dreamt that he would ever ask her to come back and do one, after the
treatment that she received? She has overcome it; completely overcome it. She knows
that it is all within her. She doesn’t turn to anyone to blame; she knows it’s within her.
She tries to find out where, in her, she’s been carrying on these unlovely conversations,
and then – changing the conversations within her – she changes the world in which she
lives.

So, “in my Father’s house,” (which is your Father’s house, for we have but one Father
and we are that Father) are the unnumbered states of consciousness – and they dwell in
the Father, and the Father is our own wonderful human Imagination. The adjustment is
made wherever you are. If you are off to bed, just about to retire, make the adjustment
there. If you are sitting in a cocktail lounge, make the adjustment there. It doesn’t
matter where you are; you can do it within your Imagination in the twinkling of an eye.
What would it feel like if… and set your frame of reference. Your frame of reference…
every one has a frame of reference. Go down to the street tonight where people are lying
in the gutter, and they have a frame of reference.

They know what their parents or their friends think of them. They would know now
what the same people would think of them, if they saw them differently. If they only
knew that within their mind’s eye they could appear to themselves as one of [the]
dignified beings pulling their own weight in this world (and their parents would be
proud of them and not ashamed of them) and persuade themselves as they drop off into
sleep that is how they are appearing to Caesar − they will rise from that gutter and be
disgusted with themselves and the gutter and the environment, and go right on – go
right up and do something that is worthy of a real man of this world. They would!
But who is going to reach them to tell them it’s all within them? You can tell them
because you know it. Don’t go out and talk about it, but you’ll have an occasion to turn
someone from that state into another state − and you will find yourself knowing they are
only states − and it’s so easy to forgive one, knowing it’s only a state.

You will pull him out of the state because you learn to discriminate between the man
and his present state. The present state may be most unlovely, but it’s only a state; so
instead of condemning the man, it’s the state. You take him out of that state. He’s the
same being. The man who is rich today but formerly was poor – it’s the same being.
The state of poverty did not vanish because he left it. It remains a state for anyone to fall
into. And you move him into a state of wealth. Well, the state of wealth is a reality. It’s
fixed forever, and the day that he moves into it he’s going to become wealthy, and no
power in the world is going to stop him.

As long as he remains in the state of wealth he’ll reproduce it over and over and over,
and you can’t take it from him. If he doesn’t know it’s a state and he loses it all (he might
not know it was only a state) and he’ll remain out of that state in a state of poverty. But if
he knows it was a state to begin with, he can always go back into that state. Any man can
do it.

So, you know that it’s a simple, simple technique, but you cannot be sure that you have
moved unless you can see motion relative to a fixed object − some other object. You
always have faces in your mind’s eye of those who know you. How do they know you? If
you like it, that’s fine, if you don’t like it, how would you like them to know you? Well
then, you name it and then let them know you. All you do is: “Let there be light.”
(Genesis 1:3)

Let the face become luminous, reflecting that thing in you. As it is changed in you, you’ll
see it on their faces. Believe it! Believe in the reality of this subjective state. That is your
hope, and this is the subjective appropriation of this hope. What hope? The faces are
reflecting what you really want to see. And in a way that no one knows, you will become
that man, and these faces actually will appear just as you have seen them in your mind’s
eye. And they will be proud of you, as you are proud of yourself.

Now let us go into the silence.

Good! Now, are there any questions, please?

Q. What is the highest use to which one can apply this imaginal power?

A. What is the highest use to which one can apply his imaginative power? There is no
limit. Tomorrow morning you will see what the world will call the first sign in eternity: a
blast-off towards an inter-stellar object. We have all the faith and confidence in the
world that these boys will make it and they will actually land on that object in space,
500,000 miles from earth, and that is only the beginning. There is no limit, because God
is all, and we are God! In this world, there is no limit to what man can do.

Whoever thought, when we discovered this land four hundred years ago, that we would
have done with it what we’ve done? Water was running unnumbered of years − and then
man harnessed it. See what we’ve done with this barren valley right here in our state
through irrigation.

The water was always there, but no one believed it could be done. So don’t put any
limitation on what man can do – none. And yet, in the end he will awaken from it all,
and he is God who conceived it all. He is destined to awaken as God the Father! That’s
what man is destined to.

Any other questions?

Q. Do you think that sometimes the things we may desire may not be the best things for
us, to qualify our creative Imagination in that way?

A. Some things we may desire may not be the best things for us. Naturally, I’ll agree with
that. But I am free to choose. And my choice may be a wrong one, but I cannot say in
advance that I would regret it. If it’s my choice, I must be big enough – having made the
choice and discover afterwards that it’s not what I want to perpetuate – to drop it. It’s a
state, and only a state.

We have all kinds of ways of detaching after our choice has been proven wrong. Today
many a person is planning his retirement − planning all sorts of things. You can go off to
Mexico, or you can go to Greece, go some place where you think you can live better and
cheaper – to discover after a year of it that he’s homesick; he wants to return to his
native land.

But that was his choice, if he is big enough to admit to himself: “I planted it” and then
replant his seed.

A friend of mine has just retired at the age of sixty-three from Standard Oil of California.
He has two children, now grown and happily married, and they have their own little
families. He and his wife have a nice home in Fairfax, completely free of all debts − no
mortgages. And he thought, as he told me last year, that he could retire on $1,200 a
month – a comfortable retirement for the two of them.

Well, he retired in May and departed on the sixteenth of June. He was sitting at his desk
looking over the papers, and had a massive hemorrhage and he was gone instantly. Well,
that was his plan – and then a sudden departure. Plans and plans and plans!
However, she is left with a fair amount of the money. So, plan away. Don’t think in
terms of anything of that nature. Just plan. If you depart now, all well and good; you are
restored to life anyway.

Nothing dies. Not a thing dies. And you continue the journey until you awake. The whole
thing is moving towards an end, which is predestined, and that departure from this
world is called in Scripture resurrection. When man resurrects, he departs forever from
this world of death (for it is dead here).

Q. The fact that you were embraced first by love, and then power – does that prove that
love is more important?

A. God is Love.

Q. That goes before anything?

A. The foundation is love. God is love. Power is an attribute of God. Wisdom is an
attribute of God. But God is Love. It’s not an attribute.

It’s the foundation for the “human form divine,” and the “human form divine” is love.
Peace is an attribute; power is an attribute – all these are attributes. Mercy is an
attribute. But love is the reality of God.

So when John said: “God is Love,” he spoke from experience. All these evangelists are
unknown to the world because these are all anonymous names. They were relating their
own experience. And I can tell anyone that I know from experience that God is love.

You don’t have to ask who you’re looking at. It’s nothing but love, and it’s man – infinite
love. If man would exercise power in the true sense of the word, he would agree that he
loved. Just imagine man endowed with this enormous power without love!

What a power to contemplate. But we do not awaken until we are first baptized in the
body of love. That is baptism of the Holy Spirit, of which all little baptisms on earth are
but a shadow. That’s not really baptism, but it’s a shadow – keeping alive the hope for
baptism with the Holy Spirit. Then he embraces you and you fuse with it and merge into
the body of God forever and forever.

Any other questions, please? If there aren’t any, we are here through Friday. Every night
we begin at 7:30, and then next week, Monday through Friday till we have the series of
ten. I hope I’ll see you often.

Thank you.