Neville Goddard (April 23, 1971)
Paul asked the question, “who are you, to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own Master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand.”
Now that whole drama takes place within the individual. My “servant” is this garment that is speaking to you. Your “servant” is not one who cleans your home, but the body that you are wearing. That’s your “servant.” “Let no man pass judgment on that servant,” for the Master is in control.
We are told in the same Book of Romans: “If it were not for the Law, I would not know sin, but I know sin only by reason of the Law. I should not know what it is to covet if the Law did not say, ‘You shall not covet.’ Therefore against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight.”
No one knows what the Master is putting the servant through in order to transform him into His own Being. And everyone, whether he knows it or not, goes through hell, — but everyone. When one gloats because so far he hasn’t touched it or remembers that he’s done something similar, — well then, I wouldn’t say, pity him, but he doesn’t know. He just does not know.
Now let me share with you a letter that came today. The lady is here tonight. She said, “In a dream these huge, huge machines that move mountains”– you’ve seen them — “and make highways; and there was a man who led me by some magnetic current. I moved like a puppet, as he simply moved me at his will. But inwardly I rebelled and used every ounce of strength I could to break this robot,” — but she couldn’t. He simply moved her at his will, and she played the part, the part of a puppet.
Then she said, “I saw something forming. He was trying to form something in me, or out of me, or by me. But something was forming and it seemed to form out of hot, liquid glass.”
Well, you know the intensive heat that it would take to reduce glass to a liquid state.
“And then I noticed that the form of a man took shape and it came out of the top of my head. The head was perfect, — perfectly formed, but the rest was still a mass not yet formed.”
I would say to her, it was perfectly formed. Don’t expect anything below the head to form. You are not going to find below the head the form you now wear. I say the form is complete when you saw the head come out of your head.
Now in Jeremiah we are told, in the last verse of the 30th chapter; “The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind. In the latter days you will understand it.” Then going to the next chapter, the 31st, we are told: “The Lord has done a great thing on the earth. A man is compassed by a woman.” This is translated as; “He has turned a woman into a man,” — “the return of the Virgin Israel, his own emanation to Himself, the Lord Jehovah.”
At the very end, if anyone is to blame, it is only God. As told in the Book of Job in the end of all the trials, all the horrors through which he was put; and then his friends came and comforted him. It’s all his friends — and comforted Job for the horror, for the evil the Lord God had brought upon him.
So this body, — you put it through hell, may I tell you? But you put it through hell to learn certain lessons. For we are told, “the Law is spiritual.” But man does not know the Law is spiritual until he has gone through all these fires of experience, and then he discovers that it is spiritual; and in the end, when the whole thing unfolds within him, then the Law becomes easy for him to operate, — but not until the end. For we are told: “God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” He “has consigned all men to disobedience, that He may have mercy upon all.”
Here is a simple story [For other stories regarding Joseph Berlay and members of his family see: Where is Golgotha (April 9, 1971), How True This Is (January 14, 1972) and The Shield of Faith (March 13, 1972)]. A boy born in poverty, born in Odessa, Russia, in a Jewish family who knew nothing of full meals; he was the oldest of a family of five. At a very tender age his mother died, leaving just a few babies. He was then maybe, I would say, ten. He had to work to support the family. His father was a worker, but could not bring in enough to feed the family. He never knew what it was to have a new pair of shoes, a new pair of pants, a new shirt, a new hat. Everything was given by charity, and these gifts were not new things;they were simply hand-me- downs, what people had on. So, when he wore out the burlap shoe, he could go back and get another pair of things to wrap his foot in cold Russia.
He got a job going to the bank every day with large denominations of paper, and they would be exchanged for silver and copper. So when he came back he had the equal amount of money, this time in silver and copper. And one day, standing before the teller, the cashier, he noticed that the copper and the silver had similar external markings; they looked alike. And he wondered to himself, “wouldn’t it be wonderful if he made a mistake? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that cashier made a mistake and gave me silver instead of copper?”
At that moment he assumed that the cashier did, and in his mind’s eye he took the things and then walked back to the store. He knew the cashier had not done it, but he simply wiped it out and played a little game. And he walked back feeling that the cashier had made the mistake and he wondered: “Now what would I do? I will go into a restaurant and eat for the first time in my life to where I feel satisfied. I will eat until it comes through my ears, then I’ll buy a pair of shoes and then I’ll buy a pair of slacks.” He knew that it would cover that much. When he got back to the store the man hadn’t made a mistake, but he had the joy of walking in that assumption.
The next day the man made that mistake. And he realized it the minute the man made the mistake. So he went to another bank and changed the money into the right amount so that he could take back the right amount to the store, leaving this money over. And with that extra money, he said, “I wrestled all day with myself, and that night when I went to bed I could hardly sleep. I wrestled and wrestled with myself because that was in conflict with what my dead mother had taught me. ‘Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet.’ The next day my hunger and my desire to have a new pair of shoes and a new pair of pants overpowered what I had heard from my mother, and I ate until it came through, not my ears, but till I was stuffed. Then I bought myself a pair of slacks and I bought myself a pair of shoes.”
Well, who did it? “If the Law had not come into the world, I would never have known sin. If the Law did not say, ‘You shall not covet,’ I would not know what it is to covet, and yet He who is guiding me consigned me to disobedience.”
So here is the lady led like a puppet by this current that she could not control. It controlled her, forming out of her and in her that which could perfectly reflect itself. It is the story of Christ. “Until Christ be formed in you,” so we are told. “Christ reflects the glory of God, and is the express image of His person.”
Well who is forming the Master? The word translated “Master” means the Supreme Authority, the Controller, God, the Lord. That’s what it means. So when they use the word, “Master,” — you look it up, and you will see it means the Supreme Authority, the Lord, God, the Controller. So the Controller is in control of every life in the world. That Controller is God and you are consigned to disobedience that He may have mercy upon you.
So you find yourself, as he did, hungry and embarrassed because of the rags that he wore; and he learned that the Law is spiritual. So he rose from the state as a little, impoverished, Jewish boy in Odessa, in Russia. And after the revolution he found himself, when the war came to an end, among soldiers who left Russia and made their way to France. So when he died at the age of 77 on Good Friday, — this past Good Friday — he could leave an estate that runs into millions. He learned the Law.
He learned that the Law is spiritual. And he told me himself he never took a man to court for unpaid bills. He would sit at his desk when all the employees left and he would write out a letter thanking the man for his check. He never mailed it, but he would get himself into that mood and thank them for the check that they had sent. And he said, “Within a matter of days, never in excess of a week, but quite often two or three days, a check came.” The check came to him in payment of an unpaid bill that was long overdue. “But,” he said, “I never once had to lose a friend, for I cannot remain in business and lose customers; so I never had to dun a customer. I’ve learned the Law. I learned that these assumptions, though denied by my senses, if I really believe them and put all my faith in the assumption, it would become a reality. And so, I lived by it. Long before I met you Neville, — long before I ever heard of you. I heard of you only through my wife. She heard of you and heard the Law, and we sort of struck it off together when we were in Paris; but long before I met her or met you, I proved this law when I was a poor little boy in Russian, and I began to live by it. So I have never once taken a man to court to get back monies I had advanced in the form of merchandise.”
So when he died at the ripe old age of 77, — he died quite suddenly of a heart attack, — well, he had proven that Paul’s words were right; and he didn’t know Paul, for he was born and raised in the Jewish faith; and I doubt that he ever read the New Testament. So when Paul makes the statement in the 7th chapter of Romans that: “The Law is spiritual,” — when he makes that bold statement that: “If it were not for the Law, I never should have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ So, God has consigned all men to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all.”
And just as the lady resisted, but could not really resist; she was guided in a certain direction against her will and she had to go, for that Something-within-her is Master and it’s putting you through the furnaces.
“How long, how vast, how severe the furnaces ‘ere you find the Father were long to tell.” (Blake, from “Jerusalem”) And the Father is the Master. That’s the Being that you really are, and you — the thing that you see here — is but an emanation of that Master. And no one knows the background of that servant, for this is the servant.
So, “I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my will.” So he is called the “servant”; but in the end, he is called the “Son.” He actually, now, has returned and become one. But standing before him is the one that he put through all the paces. So, it is David. In the 51st Psalm, Nathan the Prophet goes in unto him and reminds him what he did when he went in unto Bathsheba. He sent Bathsheba’s husband into battle in the hope and knowledge that he would be killed and then he would get Bathsheba. So Nathan goes and tells him; and then the words of David: “Against Thee, — Thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in Thy sight.”
And yet, who did it? “I only did your will that you gave me by this Law that you gave me, the desire to covet. I never would have known what it is to covet had not the Law said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ And so, you made me sin. So, God consigned me to sin by putting upon me a burden that I could not, in this flesh, resist.” So, “Who are you,” he asked, “to pass judgment on the servant of another? He stands before his own Master, or he falls before his own Master, but he will be upheld, for the Master is able to stand him up.”
So everyone in the world has gone through hell, may I tell you. If they haven’t, they are going to go through it, or they are going through it now. And you have lost — you say you have five senses — you have lost every one of them at some time, but every one; and in the end, you will be the one spoken of in the Gospel who has the power to forgive sin. When he comes, He comes only at the end of the journey.
Christ comes once, at the end. That’s when He comes. And when He comes, He comes in the most marvelous, mysterious way, and lets the one for whom He comes, — for He was the Master all along, — and when He comes, He lets the one in whom He now rises experience who He is. And you experience Christ in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience.
In this world we can know a thing mentally by comparing it to other things, analyzing it and accepting it; but we know a thing spiritually only by becoming it. You will never in eternity know Christ until you become Christ. And Christ comes at the end, the very end.
So when He comes, — all right, you know exactly who He is, and you forgive every being for what he has done, what he is going to do or what he may be compelled to do. For he moves under compulsion, — every one. You have stolen, and you’ve sat in judgment on the thief. You have been blind. And he said, “Master, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” He said, “Neither the man nor his parents, but that the works of God be made manifest.”
Don’t blame him, as all people do. He is blind — all right, — blind from birth. The question would imply that the one who asked the question believed in reincarnation, but he does not accept that theory. “Who sinned?” This man? He is born, from birth, born blind. Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? That is the story in the 9th of John.
And he answered: “Neither this man nor his parents, but that the works of God be made manifest. Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”
So he takes the Son — takes you; it’s called the “servant,” and puts him through hell. As she said, “What fires it must have taken to take glass and turn it into a molten state? It was hot liquid glass formed into a man, and it came out of the top of my head; and the face was that of a man. It was complete,” — that’s the word “perfect,” – complete, but the body was not, because the body is not going to be like this body. It’s going to be that glorious Body of which I have spoken time and again when it moves up like a seraphim — that fiery, fiery serpent.
The face, yes, is human, the voice human, the hands human; but do not ask about the body. That is something entirely different. She saw correctly, and she had already gone through the furnaces or she could not have seen that crystal-clear state that is so clear that it can reflect the glory of God. Were it not made in that form it could not reflect the glory of God. The imagery is perfect. It not only reflects it, it radiates it, because he becomes one with The One who put him through the furnaces.
So when she reads tonight — and I hope she will — that statement in the 31st, “This great thing that God has done on earth, that a woman compasses a man,” — a woman turned into a man, — that that which was the radiation of Jehovah, called in Scripture the “Virgin Israel,” now returns and is Jehovah Himself. Then the emanation, yet my wife, is still, now, myself. It returns, and the two become one; but the Father suffered with the radiation.
So let no one tell you that what you have done, you should be remorseful about it and dwell upon it. May I tell you, you are learning the Law, and learning that the Law is spiritual. It’s not observing outer things, like washing my hands before meals and lighting candles on a certain day, and saying Grace and doing all these things that people do outwardly; it’s what you do inwardly. What am I doing this very moment — at every moment of time?
Am I judging people by their outward performance, their social position, their intellectual position, their financial position? Or am I asking of them one question: What do you want? And though it may seem the most impossible request, you grant it. Well that’s testing yourself, now, to exercise this power. For in granting it you are forgiving sin, for they are missing the mark. To “sin” is to “miss the mark” in life. So the ultimate goal is the formation of that Being that can radiate and reflect the glory of God. That’s the end — “telos,” the end; and it means “perfect, complete, finished,” that you may say, “I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do. Now return unto me the glory that is mine, the glory that I had with Thee before that the world was.”
Yes, I gave it up as the son of God, and took upon myself this garment, and became a servant, a slave, and was crucified upon this garment called the “cross,” and made myself of no reputation, and became obedient unto death — even death on this cross, and went through all the horrors of the world; and He called me, then, His servant. But in the end, when I have completed the work that I came to do, the cross is taken off, and I arise, and I am the very Being, for I rose from the son to that of the Father.
But because I am Father, there still must be a son to bear witness to my fatherhood, and he stands before me, and he’s David: — the sum total of all my human experiences, but this time glorified. He doesn’t miss anything. His eyes are perfect, as told in the Book of Samuel: “beautiful eyes, clear complexion,” — everything about him is perfect. You could not improve on the beauty of David. Not a thing is missing when you look upon him and see your son. And you certainly put him through the paces. You tore his eyes out when he was born blind. You took from him the capacity to speak. You took from him the capacity to hear. All these things you took, and he had to obey you, just as this lady had to obey this simple current pulled by a man.
A man was directing it, and it started off with these enormous instruments that plough up a mountain, and it removes a mountain. That’s how the vision began.
And so you saw them removing mountains. You have seen them making highways where they go through an entire area of forest, and in no time it is simply leveled and they make a highway. Well they are making a highway in her, and have made it, for the end justifies all the horrors that she has gone through. For that was only showing her in vision — this lovely imagery — what she has gone through. She has been ploughed and ploughed and ploughed, and has suffered and suffered; but something lovely was coming out, and coming out her own skull, when a woman is turned into a man. And now she goes back and she is one with the Father.
So when you see anyone in the world and you are going through — don’t analyze yourself and ask, what have I done that is wrong? What have I done that is wrong? Well go to Scripture and find out. “He consigned me to disobedience,” so if I disobey the Law, it is He. Then who is He? My own wonderful Lord. And who is that Lord? My imagination. That is the Father. That is the Lord. That is the Master.
So I obeyed him every moment of time; and when he took me up as a boy and shipped me two thousand miles away to school without any friends, any relatives to receive me, because the fire was so intense and the urge to go, I had to get going. And when I was fired from one job, or was fired from the other, or when I quit, I had that intense desire to do something that was different. It was He who was guiding me all along.
It was He who took me to London when I really wasn’t qualified to do it; and then in London to find a man — a retired engineer who liked the psychic world and introduced me to this way of thinking — just a little spark — it was all there. He only had to put the spark to it; so when I came back, I was living in the second-hand bookstores in New York City. When I could afford a book, I’d buy a book. And when I traveled as a dancer, I traveled with my library. When the others played cards through the day to kill the time between shows — for we did three of four shows a day — I was reading my books. And when they went out after the show at night doing some things, I would take my books, and I built my library that way when I could ill afford to buy a book. That’s the way I spent my money.
So, I tell you, everyone is playing the part that the Master has determined. And we think we are so completely free in this world. We aren’t free until the end — not until the very end when the Son sets us free. “For if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed,” — but not until the end.
So I would pass along: we are discarding the errors and holding onto the truth, and discarding more errors and holding onto the truth, for then, “I am the Truth, I am the Way, I am the Life.” There is no other way. I have told you exactly how it’s going to happen. There is no other way.
There isn’t a morning’s paper that some publicity agent isn’t trying to persuade those who read it that there is another way, and they call it by all these different-isms. There is no other way.
In the very end, you are going to find Who-You-Are; and when you find Him, you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord God Jehovah. And then will come that inevitable moment when that end is reached that you take off the garment, and you are one with Eternity; and all those who preceded you are not greater than you because they have preceded you. No, — you are all the same, — the Brotherhood. And that one brotherhood forms the one God and Father of all.
So, “Who are you?” asked Paul in his 14th chapter, the 4th verse of Romans: “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own Master that he stands or falls, and his Master is able to make him stand.” He will be held upright; and in the end, it will all be forgiven.
So tonight I say to my friend who wrote the letter I got today, congratulations. And if the vision seemed wild at times, I rejoice. Put them down for me and send them no matter how they come. They all make sense to me, I tell you. Your letter was one of sheer joy today.
And your daughter’s letter was sheer joy too. That has tremendous significance. She has seen me in the role — and when this monstrous thing appeared and was just about to bite you, my face appeared; and she told you in the letter — told me at least — it was not the monster’s face, it was your face; and the whole thing vanished. Wherever He appears, it will put an end to all the nonsense, for I’ve gone through it, my dear, — gone through every thing that I’ve told you. I am not speculating. I am not theorizing.
I would say to anyone tonight who is passing through great sorrow, “The Master is doing it.” The Master has come. Were you not now conscious of the Law, it’s because you are not ready for it, but you’ve been made conscious of the Law; and unless you are conscious of the Law, you cannot violate the Law. There could be no sin in the world unless there was Law, because sin is simply falling short of a mark. If you didn’t have a mark in this world, if death meant nothing to you, “Thou shalt not kill,” would mean nothing. If you accept the Commandments, — well then, the violation of them is sinning. But no violation, if you haven’t the Law. How can you violate what you do not have as a mark? If you have no goal in this world, how can you miss it? If you have no objective, how could you miss it? But you have an objective, and these who are here, — they have the greatest objective. That end is to be Christ, — not to serve Christ, — that is not good enough; but to be Christ. You will never know Him in any other way, other than being Christ.
You do not know love in the true sense of the word, until you are actually incorporated into the body of Love. Then you are Love. Well we have glimpses of it by being in love. How else could a man know love unless he’s in love? You can talk about it, and all these things, but one must be in love to know love. But the extreme of Love is when one is incorporated into the body of Love. Then you can’t describe that joy. You can’t describe that Love.
Only an experience of God in the form of Love could ever describe it to the individual who has it; but how is he going to tell it to convey that same experience to another? He can’t do it, but he can encourage others, and they will simply believe him — if they believe him at all — and he will go blindly on telling all, those who believe and those who do not believe, until that moment in time when he returns to the body of Love and takes up his place. Where? In you. For in the end there is only one — one Father of all.
So tonight if you have the time, read that 14th and the 7th, in fact it’s all in Romans really where he takes the first eight chapters and lays the foundation. But the 7th — I quoted quite a bit from the 7th tonight. And you will find that He forgives everyone, for “He who would rub out the people of the Way then became the greatest,” — I would say — promotion agent of the Way.
The lady also said in her vision that there was Paul, and she was Paul; but Paul spoke of himself as woman, — woman turning into a man. I tell you, in the Resurrection you are above the organization of sex. You are neither male nor female. You are neither bound nor free. You are Christ and Christ is God.
Until that moment comes, you still are the servant of that Master who is leading you, as He leads her; and the day will come when He will form Himself in you. Christ will form, that He may radiate you, for you are the Master and reflect you; and when that moment comes, then you return, and you are one with the Master who is the Lord Jehovah. It seems beyond the wildest dreams of man. But may I tell you, it is true.
So don’t condone anyone. Leave them alone. When they are suffering, let your heart go out to them and express mercy, for you’ve gone through it. Or else, you will go through it, for not one will come out until he is perfect, as his Father is perfect. And the Father had to go through every experience of man to be perfect. And you are going to go through, or you have gone through — I dare say you have gone through; that’s why you are here — all the experiences of humanity. And in the end, you are God the Father.