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Neville Goddard
2-24-1969
CHRIST BEARS
OUR SINS
Peter tells us that Christ bears our sins in his
body on the cross. And the prophet Isaiah said: "He takes our
infirmities and bears our diseases."
Who is this
being who bears our sins, our infirmities, and our diseases? Christ!
Our wonderful human imagination! When you are in pain, or
experiencing deep sorrow, your imagination is doing the suffering. If
a friend tells you he is not feeling well, or is in great pain, and
you tell him that his imagination - called Christ - is doing the
suffering, your friend would not believe you, because he conceives
Christ to be someone other than himself. But Christ is the human
imagination, and until man discovers this for himself the Bible will
make no sense to him whatsoever.
We are told: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God. The Word became flesh and dwells in us." That word is
your I Am! And if the Word is God and dwells in you as your
awareness, is not God doing the suffering when you say, I am
suffering? Having just revealed God's name, you are confessing that
God is in pain; therefore, does He not bear all the sufferings of the
world in his body while he is on the cross of mankind?
When
I speak of the joy of awakening to the knowledge of who God really
is, I would think everyone would be eager to experience that
awareness; yet only an nth part will say, Yes! A friend wrote,
saying: "My husband applied for and received a temporary
position as a carpenter, working for the Los Angeles school system.
When he was let out he said, `They will call me back for another
temporary period.' I suggested that if he wanted to work there on a
permanent basis he could, if he would imagine it. Instead he gave me
all kinds of reasons why a permanent position was not
possible.
"Recently he was called back for another
temporary position. When I reminded him of what he had imagined six
months ago he did not want to recognize his harvest of the seed he
had planted and became very angry. As he spoke, our souls made
contact and I heard him say, `I am asleep and don't you dare awaken
me!’ “
Her husband, like 99% of the people of the
world, does not want to be awakened, feeling that if he awakens to a
higher level he will lose the pleasures of the flesh.
A
friend, a very successful playwright, with many famous stars as his
clients, used to listen to my visions and my interpretations of
scripture for a short time, then tell me he had heard enough. He
didn't want to go beyond the point of curiosity, to become interested
and desire the spiritual world, because he was afraid he would lose
his physical contact with life and he was only interested in sex. He
had money and everything money could buy, and he loved playing the
field in the theatrical world.
He died a few years ago
and is now restored to a body just like the one he had here, only
young, full of vigor, eager to continue his sexual life. This man has
not felt the famine which is sent. It is not a hunger for food or a
thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God. And until
that famine possesses you God's word will not hold your interest. I
could go on the radio and TV or write articles for the newspapers
regarding my experiences, but - like the lady's husband - they would
say, "I am asleep and don't you dare awaken me!"
Now,
God and his word are one, so if God sent his word, then he sent
himself declaring: "He who sees me, sees him who sent me; for I
am the word which will not return unto me void, but must accomplish
that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I was
sent."
The outer man is the external word, which
comes first. The inner man is then sent to animate and eventually
give life to the outer man by fulfilling the word. And when the outer
man hungers for the word of God, everything said in scripture
concerning God's plan of self-redemption fulfills itself in him. He
doesn't redeem someone else, as there is no one else. We are the gods
who came down and God can only redeem himself by fulfilling
scripture.
Now another lady shared this vision saying:
"I am standing in the midst of an enormous crowd. Everyone
around me is screaming, `He is crazy. He is mad. He is crazy. He is
mad,' over and over again. Walking quickly to discover who they are
referring to, I see a man standing alone at the head of the crowd.
Recognizing him as the man I love, I run to him and cry, `I love you,
I love you.'
"Although the crowd surges upon him
and beats him, I continue to express my love. Suddenly he places his
hands upon my neck. I feel his thumbs press into my throat and feel
as though I am going to die. Then the pressure is released. The man
raises his hands, which become two white wings, which caress me with
an indescribable love as I awake."
That night this
lady fulfilled the 40th, 48th, 51st, 52nd and 53rd [chapters] of
Isaiah. I say to her without any doubt in my heart, that she is very
near salvation. Everything in her wonderful vision was made visible.
She was the man and the crowd. She sent herself through hell because
she loves herself, just as you and I do. In Blake's lovely song, “A
Little Boy Lost”, he said:
"Nought loves
another as itself,
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible
to thought
A Greater than itself to know."
How
can thought know a thought greater than itself? How could you love
another more than yourself? It is impossible, for there is no
other.
Love is the being playing every part. Love is the
crowd, the tempters, and the one abused. Feel distress, and you are
abusing Christ by saying, I am distressed. Feel ashamed, limited,
inadequate or afraid, and God is experiencing them all; for He is
your awareness, believing himself to be ashamed, limited, inadequate,
or afraid and dying in your sins.
Just as my friend
heard the vision tell her to change the comma, for the statement
should read: "Before Abraham, was I am," here again we find
that unless you believe your I am is the one you have worshiped on
the outside, you die in your sins; for your I am was before
Abraham.
It is Christ who bears all of your afflictions,
your sorrows and diseases. There is no record of a man who took upon
himself a terminal disease while the one he took it from was set
free. The implication is there, for - bearing our afflictions and
weakness - God has the power to set man free. But Christ is not
someone external to yourself. The Universal Christ is a diffusion of
an individuality. You say I am, I say I am. We are the same I am, who
is Christ, who is God, who is Jehovah - for there is nothing but I
am!
Christ, who is your very self, bears all of your
afflictions, your weaknesses, and sins; but this is difficult for man
to understand. Several years ago I gave a series of nineteen lectures
in San Francisco, attended by a lady and her lawyer son. At the end
of the series the lady questioned her son, saying: "Do you
believe Neville?" And answering with his rational mind he said:
"He sounds sincere. He may be sincerely wrong, but I'm sure he
is sincere."
At that time the son was living with
his mother. Every night before retiring they would remind each other
to put the law of identical harvest into practice. When I returned to
San Francisco the next year I learned that this man had formed an
organization which was in the process of building the largest and
most modern co-op in the Bay Area, called the Comstock. This project
was followed by building up the peninsula and now this gentleman is
worth millions.
Both mother and son used the law to
achieve their every goal, yet she admitted she did not understand
what I meant when I said Christ suffers for her. Although she could
tell me: "I have a toothache," she couldn't grasp the fact
that she is her imagination and therefore the cause of the toothache
as well as the wonderful co-op.
If you are suffering,
Christ is suffering, for his name is I am, and there is no other
Christ. God actually became flesh and dwells in you. Once you realize
this you will never turn to another. This gentleman has made a
fortune, yet he does not understand how it all came about, because
the hunger is not upon him. Although it would not be necessary, he is
not willing to give up his enormous earthly holdings to have the
experiences which would result in regeneration.
You do
not kill desire. You do not have yourself castrated. You are simply
beyond the organization of sex and your desire for earthly things
ceases to be. Ninety-nine per cent of the people here desire worldly
pleasures, while I speak of a pleasure that transcends this world -
where one lives in a world of reality and creativity. But until that
famine comes, you will continue to desire things that die in this
world.
Now, another lady shared this experience, saying:
"In my vision I knew you had died, yet you had returned to
lecture and teach as usual. You were wearing my earthly father's
face, yet I knew the bone structure to be yours. Everyone called you
the Father, but not knowing my earthly father, they could not see his
face, only yours. As I woke I knew that the face I touched on the
surface would be that of my earthly father, but its structure would
be that of the Father."
There is only one Father.
It is He who wears every mask. In this wonderful experience, she saw
her earthly father wearing the frame of the Father, because the
Father is a protean being and assumes every face. She saw the
foundation, the bone structure of the man who told her salvation's
story, wearing the face of her earthly father.
We are
told that when God took upon himself the sins of the world, he was a
man of sorrow, despised and rejected by men. There is no description
of the man in whom God awoke because he is never a sculptured,
beautiful man on the outside, but a perfectly normal person.
This
lady said that she is very fond of the Book of John, as it seems to
be more loving than any other book in the Bible. I will go along with
that. She felt that the answer to the experience I just spoke of
would come to her from the Book of John. I suggest she read the 10th
chapter of John. In it Christ is called a man who has a devil and
they question why listen to him. You, my dear, are that central
figure, and you are also the crowd screaming at yourself; and you
deny the existence of the Christ within, for there is no other. There
is only God.
You can put God to the test, and if He
proves himself in the testing then you will know God is your own
wonderful human imagination. If you want the joy of marriage, a love
affair, or a romance, you can test God by assuming the one you desire
is with you now. And to the degree you persist in that assumption, it
will be yours to experience. Do not be concerned as to how or when it
will happen; simply persist in the assumption that it has happened,
and when it does you will know who God is.
My wife woke
too early to get up this morning, so she thought about what she
wanted most, and that was for her husband and daughter to be
blissfully happy. Thinking of what she could do to make it so, she
realized that it was something they alone must decide. Then she fell
asleep dwelling on their happiness and this is her dream: Seeing me
lying on a couch she heard me say: "I don't feel comfortable
here," and she replied: "I know - you don't like to sleep
on the first floor, but would rather be elevated and sleep
above.”
Then the dream changed and she was putting
a puzzle together with our daughter Vicki, who began to laugh as she
picked up a piece of the puzzle and watched it fall into its perfect
place. Looking at Vicki she said to herself: "I have never seen
her look so pretty and be so blissfully happy." Then she awoke.
Her desire for happiness was answered in the depth of her being and
must now come to the surface.
Jesus Christ is your own
wonderful human imagination and his story is all about you. Told in
the third person, it is written as though another is doing all the
suffering for you; yet you know you are the one who is suffering. I
tell you, that unless you believe your awareness of being is God you
will continue to miss your mark, thereby remaining in sin.
I
am is the key to scripture. Called Jesus Christ in the New Testament,
God the Father's name is revealed in the Old Testament as I am.
Having come into the world to fulfill the word, you cannot return
empty but must accomplish that which you purposed and prosper in the
thing for which you sent yourself. After inspiring the prophets to
tell your story, you came not only to fulfill their prophecy, but to
share your experiences to encourage others.
The Old
Testament is a prophetic blueprint which you will fulfill, for you
are the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Jesus Christ of the New.
You may either accept this truth or reject it, but what I am telling
you is true. Christ is not a little man, but the universally diffused
individuality of which we are. So when one awakes and the second one
follows, the third will awaken and eventually all of the universally
diffused individuals will awaken in that one glorious body called the
kingdom of heaven. Having come into and overcoming the world of
death, we will be victorious over our challenge.
The men
of science tell us that the universe is melting and will one day come
to its end. I am not going to question this, but I do know that
Imagination came into this world of death to overcome it. I also know
that nothing dies, because we are the immortal Imagination who
clothed himself in these garments of flesh which die, but we - their
life-giving spirit - cannot die.
I cannot force anyone
to want my experiences. My family in Barbados all live in comfort and
know they earn much more than I do. They judge a man by what he has
in this world and are not interested in who he is. They cannot
understand why a man of my age continues to do what I am doing, when
I could move to Barbados and live in clover with all expenses paid by
the business. And I can't persuade them to listen to me because the
hunger is not upon them.
Until that hunger for the
hearing of the word of God possesses you, you will continue to be
possessed by the world. You may become the Pope, but that does not
mean you hunger for the word of God. It may mean that you hunger for
the power that rests in the office of the Pope, the hunger to be
recognized and praised. But when the hunger to experience the word of
God possesses you, you will know you - the Word - sent yourself. You
will then understand the words: "He who sees me, sees him who
sent me," for you will fulfill God's word.
There
must be two witnesses: one external and one internal. The external
witness is scripture, and you who have the spiritual experience are
the internal witness. Knowing your experiences parallel the
scriptures, you know that the Father in the depths of your own being
watches to see that all the pieces are in place and the image of his
declared purpose is perfect.
Having prophesied what must
take place, God will fulfill it; and you - the image of the invisible
God - will radiate his glory and become the express image of his
person. Then you will be used as the bone structure on which every
face will be placed to reveal to the one who has the experience, the
meaning of being God the Father.
In my friend's vision
everyone referred to me as the Father. Her father was a father, but I
am the Father upon which every father's face is placed. She was aware
that I had died and had returned, only to tell the story of God's
plan of salvation in order to redeem myself, for there is only God in
the world.
Now let us go into the silence.