Neville Goddard 11-11-1968
We
are told that when Jesus found Philip, he said: "Follow me."
Then Philip told Nathanael: "We have found him of whom Moses and
the law and the prophets wrote." Philip is one who is interested
in the workings of the mind. Looking for one who is searching for the
source of the phenomena of life, Jesus finds one in whom he can
reveal himself.
The Book of John begins: "In the
beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God." Now turning into a person, it is said: "He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him
was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life
was the consciousness of men."
Read this statement
carefully and not superficially, and you will discover that from the
beginningless beginning there has been God, and another through whom
God acts and by whom God expresses himself. One who is to God what
man's imagination is to a man. They are inseparable, for the Word is
not only with God, but is God!
Man finds it difficult to
identify himself with his imagination, but the word “logos”
- translated “Word” means a purpose; a plan; a pattern.
The Word which was with God in the beginning is Divine Imagination,
through which all things are made. There is not one thing in the
world today which was not first imagined. Perhaps you cannot grasp
the idea that nature was first imagined, but you cannot deny that
man's clothing, home, business, and transportation, were
imagined.
Man expresses himself through his human
imagination, just as God expresses himself through his Divine
Imagination. There is no clear-cut separation between God and
Imagination, or man and his imagination. I tell you, Imagination is
God Himself. He is the divine body Jesus, of which we are his
members. Identifying Divine Imagination with Jesus, Blake claims
Imagination became Man, that Man may become God's power and wisdom,
called Christ. Any Christ other than he who is crucified, buried, and
rises in an individual is false, for there is no Christ other than
man's own wonderful human imagination.
God's creative
power is buried in you. Just as a seed buried in the womb of woman
must bring forth after its own kind, God's power is brought forth as
your spiritual birth. Your imagination is spirit buried in you. God -
being spirit - has planted his seed, which will erupt one day, and
you will experience a spiritual birth.
In the 3rd
chapter of the Gospel of John, he speaks to one who is a member of
the Sanhedrin, saying: "Unless a man is born from above he
cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." Why? Because it is
impossible to physically enter that which is spirit. The kingdom of
heaven, being spirit, can only be entered through a spiritual
experience. Nicodemus, accepting this statement on a physical level,
asked: "How can a man who is old re-enter his mother's womb and
be born again?" His question was answered in this strange way:
"The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound thereof,
but you cannot tell from whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is
with everyone who is born of the spirit. (wind)."
When
I was born from above I was aware of a peculiar, unearthly wind. This
wind is a must in order for man to leave this sphere of death and
enter the eternal sphere of life called the kingdom of heaven.
One
cannot speculate upon God's kingdom by using images of earth for,
"Eyes have not seen or ears heard what God has prepared for
those who love him." If your eyes have not seen or your ears
heard of that age, don't try to speculate using images of earth, for
there is nothing here that remotely resembles the kingdom.
Now
let me share my experiences with you. I retired one night, never
suspecting that the time of delivery was upon me. I had been carrying
God's plan of salvation within me since the beginning of time. It had
been growing, yet I did not suspect its birth.
That
night as I slept, I felt an unearthly vibration possess me. It
increased in intensity until I felt I must explode, when suddenly I
began to awake. Expecting to see the room I had fallen asleep in and
the normal awareness I have known after a dream of the night, I awoke
to a greater awareness - to discover I was in my skull, which was a
tomb in which I was buried.
Alone, I arose to discover
my skull was sealed and there was no escape. I knew I had awakened in
my head, yet all of the outlets through the eyes, ears, and mouth
were sealed. Intuitively I knew that if I pushed the base of my skull
I would be set free. I did and as something moved I squeezed myself
through that little opening, just as a child comes out of the womb of
a woman. When I was completely free, I looked back at the head from
which I had come. It was ghastly pale, turning from side to side as
though recovering from a great ordeal.
I had no idea I
had been sleeping in that head, but thought it was my very being. It
had never occurred to me that the spirit which gave me life was the
cause of my breathing and consciousness. I thought my physical body
was me, not realizing it was simply where the real me was
buried.
Once out of my skull, an unearthly wind caused
my head - as well as the house - to rattle. Looking for the cause, my
attention was diverted for a few seconds. And when I looked back, my
body was gone and in its place were my three brothers. One was
sitting where the head had been, while the other two were sitting at
the feet. Disturbed by the sound, one rose and moved in the direction
of the wind. Looking down, he said: "Why, it's Neville's baby."
The other two questioned his words, saying: "How can Neville
have a baby?" Without arguing the point, my brother reached
down, picked up a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and placed it on
the bed. Then I, as though having rehearsed the drama in eternity,
took the babe in my arms and said: "How is my sweetheart?"
as the child broke into a heavenly smile. Then the scene dissolved
and I awoke.
We are told that each individual is born
again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I, an
individual, have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets
wrote, for when I awoke in that tomb no one else was there. I
recognized that tomb to be my skull and when I came out from its base
I found the sign of my spiritual birth as a babe wrapped in swaddling
clothes, lying on the floor. The word translated “manger”
means “floor; the lowest point in the area”. So you see:
a child is not born. The child is only a sign of your individual
spiritual birth.
It was I who rose in the sepulcher and
pushed myself out. It was I who was born anew through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. After this experience all
of my concepts of Jesus Christ crumbled and dissolved, for I knew
that the being who was in the beginning with God actually became me
that I may become God in the most literal sense. I knew that God was
not only crucified upon me, but was buried within me. That I carried
in my body the death of Jesus, that his life might be made alive in
me.
I was awed at this experience. Knowing all of the
things I had done and was still capable of doing, I wondered how I
could be the Christ of scripture. Yet I have searched scripture and
cannot find any other explanation. I now share with you what I have
experienced, for everything recorded there as an event in the life of
one called Jesus Christ has unfolded in me.
We are told:
"You search the scriptures thinking in them you will find
eternal life, yet it is they which bear witness to me." One
hundred and thirty-nine days after my resurrection and birth from
above my head began to vibrate intensely. Suddenly it burst and I
found myself seated in a modestly furnished room. A youth, handsome
beyond measure, was leaning against the frame of an open door. As
looked at him I knew he was my son, yet I also knew he was David of
Biblical fame. At that moment I had found my son and he had found his
father.
The next morning as I searched scripture to find
out who saw David and whom David called father, this is what I found.
In the 89th Psalm, the Lord declared: "I have found David. He
has cried unto me, `Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my
salvation.’”
If David called the Lord his father,
and David called me father, am I not the Lord? This is the plan that
God established in the beginning when he gave himself to you and to
me. Being a father before the pledge, when God succeeds in the giving
you and I must be God.
Dwell upon these words: "I
am the true and living way to the Father. No one comes unto the
Father save by me." This true and living way is a pattern buried
in all which leads the individual to the discovery of being God the
Father. This truth is revealed by David, for it is he who says: "I
will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, ‘Thou art
my son, today I have begotten thee.’”
Now, Christ,
being God's creative power and wisdom, cannot be separated from God.
Christ was not some little boy who was born two thousand years ago,
but God's semen, his creative power that is buried in humanity. The
image of God is contained within that semen; and if God is a father,
when the semen awakens in the individual he will know himself to be
God, the father of all life.
One hundred and
twenty-three days after the revelation of being God the Father, I
fulfilled the 3rd chapter of John, wherein Nicodemus was told: "As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man
be lifted up." (That which is recorded in the Book of Numbers is
an adumbration of the event, for when the Son of man is lifted up it
is an extremely personal experience.)
That night a bolt
of lightening split my body from the top of my head to the base of my
spine, becoming a pool of golden liquid light. Knowing it was myself,
I knew I was self-redeemed. I fused with the light and becoming one
with it I ascended my spine to enter my skull, where the drama began.
As I did my skull reverberated from the intensity of the vibration,
and once again scripture was fulfilled.
There is no
other purpose in life other than to fulfill scripture. You may own
all of Caesar's belongings, but when you depart this world you must
leave it all behind. But when God's pattern erupts in you, you enter
an eternal world, knowing yourself to be its creative power. Then you
are used to express God in any aspect your very being so
desires.
The fourth and final revelation occurs 998 days
later. This event brings the total number of days from the birth from
above to the discovery of the dove to 1210 - as foretold in the books
of Daniel and Revelation. On this final day my skull became
transparent, as a lovely beige dove floated about twenty feet above
me. As I raised my right hand the dove descended and lit upon my
index finger. Then I brought it to my face and it smothered me with
affection.
Here again scripture was fulfilled as the
Holy Spirit descended upon me in bodily form as a dove, revealing the
story of Jesus Christ as a personal experience. When I was physically
born, it was through the action of powers not my own and I had no
consciousness of it. But my spiritual birth was consciously
experienced from beginning to end.
This is my story. It
is my hope that you will follow me. That you will believe my
experiences. If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe me,
how can I expect you to believe the heavenly things I share with
you?
Everyone imagines! Can you believe that Christ,
Imagination's power, is in you? If so, then God is in you! And if God
is in you, you cannot be lost for then God would be lost. Everyone
has to be redeemed. Everyone will be saved because God - the savior
of each individual - is redeeming himself, bringing the individual
awareness in whom He is buried back into the kingdom with him.
The
moment God buried himself in you he imprinted himself upon you,
predestining you to not only radiate and reflect God's glory, but to
be the express image of his person. God is not some impersonal force,
but a person. The unknown author of the letters to the Hebrews
claimed he was the express image of God's person. This is a true
statement. Not one will be lost because all of us will be gathered
together into that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father
of all. In the end there will be one grand fulfillment of the
greatest of all commandments: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is one.”
When I speak of my
imagination there appears to be two of us: Neville, and my
imagination. I know imagination cannot be seen, yet I also know I
cannot separate myself from it. If I lose myself in a daydream and
move from my living room in Beverly Hills to Central Park in New York
City, I have not separated myself from my creative power. I cannot,
for my imagination is my very being. I can speak of my imagination,
but I cannot separate myself from it any more than God can be
separated from Divine Imagination, for through Divine Imagination's
creativity God creates and sustains the world. Should God change his
imagining the world would cease to exist, because it must be, and is
supported by an imaginal act. The same thing is true in your world.
It will change only when you cease to continue to dwell in your
current imaginal state!
But there is a pattern buried in
you that will not change. Told in the form of a story, man thinks an
individual was born two thousand years ago. But the creative power of
God did not assume only one man; he took human nature into his sacred
Self. The one creative power of the universe is buried in humanity.
It is the same creative power in one who murders, as in the one who
is murdered. God allows you to misuse Christ, his creative power. But
in the end He will awaken and all violence within you will cease to
be, for you will discover yourself to be infinite love, infinite
wisdom, and infinite power. Then the world will become a shadow, and
you will know there is no need to fight shadows.
Now let
me share two experiences of one who knows herself to be an incurrent
eyewitness. She has the capacity to turn her thoughts inward and see
a world as solid and real as our outer one appears to be.
This
particular day she decided to leave the scene that was before her
eyes by turning inward and claiming it had vanished. But instead of
vanishing, the scene froze and everything became a cold, dead statue.
Realizing that she had the power to arrest it, she decided to test
herself to see if she could re-animate the scene once more. So she
imagined the scene was alive and instantly life flowed through the
room, as though no action on her part had ever stopped its flow. Then
she said to herself: "If I can stop and start what the world
calls vision, I should be able to stop and start what the world calls
reality." She can, for in that brief vision she learned where
life really is. Christ in her gave her a taste of the power she will
exercise consciously in the not distant future.
Although
this world appears so very real, it is a vision. "All that you
behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination
of which this world of mortality is but a shadow." If life is in
God and God is your imagination, then what the world calls life is
only an activity of your imagination. If you stop imagining and
arrest that which seems to be animated and independent of your
perception, you will prove to yourself that it can be done. Then you
will know who Christ is, for you will have discovered that "In
him is life and his life is the light of men." God animates Man
within himself. Although humanity appears to be independent, with
life in themselves, their life is but an activity of imagination, for
that is what I AM!
My friend also shared this
experience. One night in dream she was in a classroom listening to a
woman teach the law. Claiming to believe and practice the law, the
woman began to rant and rave against Neville, claiming he was insane,
as she did not believe in the promise. The lady then asked the
teacher: "Do you believe that imagining creates reality?"
and when the woman replied, Yes, the lady asked: "How would you
feel right now if you began to imagine you were God?" With that
the teacher screamed: “"You should be in the same
institution with Neville!”
It is easy to mouth the
words: imagining creates reality, but are you willing to imagine you
are God? And if you did would you become God? At that thought a line
was drawn, so she does not really believe that imagining creates
reality. She is willing to believe that she can imagine things are
better than they seem to be, but to believe she is God is an insane
thought.
Her dream fulfilled the 10th chapter of John,
where the question is asked: "Why listen to him? The man is mad
and has a demon." When one comes to tell the story of God
becoming Man that Man may become God, he is called mad, because his
words are in conflict with what the world believes.
This
is always true. If anyone told our forefathers that electricity was a
fact - that by merely turning a switch a room would be ablaze with
light, he would have been called crazy and condemned. In certain
sections of time, if a thought was in conflict with what the churches
taught, one could be burned at the stake.
Every man who
awakens to his infinite power is considered mad. His words are
considered those of the devil, for his experiences do not conform to
what men think Christ is. Men are looking for some super being to
come out of the clouds and save the people who are now dead, and
treat the others horribly. But if someone comes and claims that there
is only one savior and that one is in everyone as his awareness, that
one is considered mad and possessed by the devil.
But I
tell you: God acts the moment you imagine. You are the temple of the
living God and the spirit of God dwells in you. In the 10th chapter
of Hebrews this temple is identified with the curtain which, when
torn from top to bottom, opens up the new and living way. Then,
ascending in consciousness, you take your own blood into the presence
of the Living God.
Paul asks the question: "Do you
not know you are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God
dwells in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16) If the curtain of that temple is
torn from top to bottom, it has to be you! The spirit who ascends is
he who is buried in you, and will rise in the same manner as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. So when I ask you to follow
me, I mean it literally, for I am telling you what I know from
experience. I am not theorizing or speculating. Redemption is a very
personal experience that takes place in the individual you.
No
one really dies, for the world does not cease to exist when your
senses cease to register it. Your friends and loved ones who have
departed this world are just as real to themselves as when they were
here. Now clothed in bodies like yours and mine, they are in a
terrestrial world fulfilling their unfulfilled desires. While there
they will know the same struggles, joy and sorrow, peace and war, as
Christ continues to awaken God's image in them.
When God
said: "Let us make man in our image," He placed that image
in you. And when Christ is born in you, you - the express image of
the invisible God - enter the kingdom, radiating and reflecting God's
glory.
There are those who believe they are reborn by
changing their attitude and giving more money to the church. That is
because they do not know the mystery of Christ. My visions would
frighten them and they would call me mad; yet I am telling the truth
which I know from experience. I am not trying to share some workable
philosophy of life.
Another lady wrote telling of a
dream in which she found herself standing in a long line, moving
towards a man sitting behind a desk. When she arrived, he stamped the
back of her left hand with indelible ink and she intuitively knew
this was her entrance into heaven. A few nights later she found
herself on a highway protected by chains. Seeing two secondary roads
leading off the highway, she knew she had formerly walked there, but
was now on the road towards the kingdom of heaven.
These
dreams are foreshadowings - healthy experiences to encourage her to
persist. She has now found the one and only way to the Father. That
way is I am! Believing in the Father, she will find him, and when she
does she will find her very self!
We are told that God
speaks to man through the medium of dream and makes himself known in
vision. If this is true, no voice should interest you more than that
which is heard in your dreams and visions. Words spoken by men of the
world are spoken from theory. They voice their opinions, but I am
telling you my revelations.
This night I have told you
how Christ is formed. As Paul said: "My little children [with]
whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you." Just
like a child is being formed in the womb of a woman, when Christ is
formed in you it comes forth. Then you awaken to discover you have
been sound asleep throughout the centuries, although you did not know
it.
The world, seeing a mortal body cremated and turned
to dust, cannot understand how there can be a head that survives such
an experience; but it does, for the real Man is all Imagination. He
imagines a body there just as easily as he imagines one here. When
you see a friend or dear one who has departed you will recognize him,
but he will be young, as he is continuing the work that he set out to
do, which is to form Christ in him.
One of the signs of
your spiritual birth will be the three witnesses. As I stood watching
them their thoughts were objective to me. I was unseen by them
because spirit was born. As spirit, I was invisible to my mortal
brothers who came to witness the event.
Unless one is
born into the spirit world, when he leaves this world of flesh and
blood he is not spirit but solidly real, as we are here. He is not
seen by mortal eye because a veil has been drawn. But after your
spirit is born the veil is removed from your spiritual eyes, and you
will realize humanity is doing what must be done in order for God's
image to be formed in them.
Every man's words are his
judge. Believe me and follow me into an entirely different sphere
known as the kingdom of God.
Now let us go into the
silence.