Neville Goddard (April 09, 1963)
The crucifixion is the history of man. Our human history begins with birth and ends with death. In Divine history it begins with death and ends with birth. There is a complete reversal of these histories. Here we begin in the womb and end in the tomb: but in Divine history we begin in the tomb and awaken in the womb where we are born. Now here in this fantastic drama I think we have misconceived the part of Jesus Christ and made of him an idol, and having made of him an idol he hides from us the true God.
Let us turn to the Book of Luke 18:31-34: “And taking the twelve he said to them; ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourged him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise.’ But they understood none of these things; this saying was hid from them, and they did not grasp what was said.” We are told that no one understood him. Now believe this; I am speaking to you, as I have tried every night, from experience. I am not theorizing. I have no interest whatsoever in trying to set up some workable philosophy of life, I really haven’t. If I made my exit tonight it would make no difference to me personally, maybe to my wife and my child, my family, – but not to me.
This drama begins with the crucifixion.
“Unless I die thou canst not live;
(Blake Jer. Plate 96)
But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.
Wouldest thou die for one who never died
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee.”
This is the story of every being born of woman. No child in the world could cross the threshold that admits to conscious life unaided by the death of God. It is God’s purpose to give us himself as though there were no others in the world. Just God and you, God and I. Believe this, really. If you believe it then the most unbelievable Gospel in the world becomes possible and believable; and it takes the son to reveal it to be true.
Now this is the story as revealed to me. You may think, – well now that was just a simple, wonderful, – exciting, – yes! – just a dream. May I tell you it was not a dream. It was an experience more vivid than this moment here in this room. For true vision is far more alive than anything you have ever experienced in this world, – but anything. This night in question I was walking with an enormous number as though the whole humanity walked in a certain direction; and I was one of the unnumbered. As I walked with them, – they were all dressed in this very colorful Arabic colors; and a voice shouted out of the blue and the voice said: “And God walks with them.” A woman to my right, I would say in her thirties, maybe forty, a most attractive Arab; and she asked the voice: “If God walks with us where is he?” And the voice answered from the blue, – “At your side.” She took it as the whole vast world takes these things, – literally. And turning to her side she looked into my eyes and became hysterical, it struck her so funny. It was the funniest thing she had ever heard. “God walks with us?” And she turned to a simple man with all of his frailties, all of his weaknesses, one she knew well; and having looked into his face, having heard the voice, – she said: “What! – Neville God?” And the voice replied: “God laid himself down within you to sleep and as he slept he dreamed a dream, he dreamed” – and I completed the sentence: “He was dreaming he was me. How else would I be in this world if he didn’t dream? And you awake from sheer emotionalism.
And may I tell you this is the sensation of the crucifixion. It’s the most delightful sensation in the world; it is not painful. My hands became vortexes; my head a vortex; my feet vortexes; my side a vortex. And here I was driven into this body on the bed through my emotionalism, held by six vortexes; my hand, my feet, my head and my side. And the delight, the sheer joy of being driven upon this cross, this body! So I speak from experience; it is not a painful act. But it happened in the beginning of time. This was only a memory image returning; when I was about to awake. But in that interval, – how long, – who knows? The Bible speaks of three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection; but that is all symbolism. Blake calls it six thousand years. He said:
“I behold the Visions of my deadly Sleep of Six Thousand Years
(Jer. Plate 96)
Dazzling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious stones and gold.
I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.”
Here we turn to the drama of this coming Friday all of Christian churches will re-enact; and they differ. Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 gave the last cry on the cross as the quotation from Psalms 22:1 “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” John 19:20 gives it in the cry “It is finished.” Luke 23:46 substitutes the 31st Psalm, 5th verse for the 22nd Psalm: because he was using Mark’s script. But he elaborates on Mark’s script and he substituted Psalm 31:5 for Psalm 22:1, and this is what he quotes: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” This is the verse: “Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” He kept his faith, for he told me:
“Unless I die thou canst not live;
But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.”
There came the very act of crucifixion that was in itself resurrection. Yes, – an interval of time in between, no question about it.
But may I tell you, no one in this world can fail. As quoted in Romans 6:5: “For if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Everyone in this world will be resurrected; but it takes an interval of time with all the blows in the world to make the immortal garment.
Now listen to this carefully. It has been given to me and you take it for what it is worth. The promise of this begins in Genesis 17:19, the promise of an infant called Isaac: and the whole vast world has the strangest concept of Isaac. The Lord begat Isaac. Isaac is to be bought, not as the result of generation but the shaping of the begotten. Here is God the unbegotten shaping himself upon us; and when he completes that shape and it is perfect in his eyes then we are born from Above. So Isaac is the shaping of the unbegot, but God is not begotten, he is begetting himself on man, the individual man. And when he begot himself in me to his satisfaction, I was born from Above and went through the entire series in the interval of nine months, – judged by Caesar’s calendar. How many thousands of years prior to that I do not know, I cannot tell you. I would if I knew for I have no secrets; when I get it I tell you, but I do not know, the veil has not been lifted to that extent. But I do know that when it pleased him, that which he begot in me, then it took nine months for the entire series of these mystical experiences as described in Scripture to completely unfold within me. So I can tell you it is going to happen to you. And so there’s no time. It took nine months from the moment of the Birth but when that Birth takes place it is all in God’s keeping and you and I are put through the furnace of affliction. Let no one tell you that you are not going to, Isaiah 14:24: “As I have planned, so shall it be, as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” And no one will thwart it, – but no one. I am inclined to believe that in spite of the pain, in spite of all the things that man plots and plans in this world, there is a definite period. The Book of Habakkuk tells me it is, but they won’t tell me what the period is. He says: “The vision has it’s own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long then wait for it is sure, it will not be late.” If it will not be late and the vision has it’s own appointed hour, well then, whether Blake is right or someone else is right, I do not know. But I assure you the last section takes only nine months, even though you linger for years beyond that nine months.
For you came into your inheritance at that third experience; but the glory of your heavenly inheritance cannot become actual, or is fully realized in the individual, so long as he is still in the body. The moment he takes off that veil, called the body, he is clothed in that garment that God, and God alone, made. God was actually shaping himself upon this garment, without my consent, without my knowledge; molding that unbegotten Being that He is and giving me Himself. So when He succeeded in giving me Himself, it satisfied Him, that immortal garment that He would wear; so He wears it for his name is “I AM”.
And may I tell you in all of my experiences I never had a change of identity, – never. I have always been aware of being “I am.” I have never had any feeling of being other than who I am. And some thing was taking place in me, and it was God. As we are told: Phil: 1:6: “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ is a profession that is God and he will not stop it until he brings it to Jesus Christ in you. But we have taken Jesus Christ and made of him an image, an idol; and having made of him an idol he now hides from us the true God.
It is God, the only God, that is actually shaping himself upon you. And when that is shaped upon you, – this is a form, a mold, – but this cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven; this is flesh and blood. It takes this to mold it upon it, for what is being molded upon it is God, the unbegotten, and God being Spirit he is molding himself as spirit, the immortal you. And then you, God, are clothed. Well, how could you clothe God in form? He is clothing himself in a shape and that is you, – so he begets us. But it began with the crucifixion. The crucifixion does not end the drama, it begins the drama. So every one becomes a breathing, living, conscious being because God died for him.
It’s the mystery of life through death, as told us in John 12:24: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It has to fall into the earth and die, and this is the earth (the body) in God’s kingdom. And God falls into this earth and dies, he forgets that He is God in His belief that He is man. God actually becomes man that man may become God; and molds Himself; this Unbegotten Being upon man. And when He is satisfied with that molding process, it is in the eye of God that it’s perfect; therefore, if it is perfect, then God is born in man. So God actually gives Himself to us, to each of, as if there were no others in the world, – just God and you, God and I. Believe it. The whole story of the Gospel is this story.
So the crucifixion, from my own personal experience, is not as the churches depict it. The sorrow comes in between; that interval be it 6000 years, I do not know. But in that interval we have to be molded, as we are told in Isaiah 48:10,11. “I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it.” For there is no other way in the world to bring me into that state of perfection and to weave me into an immortal body to receive God Himself as my own being. So I went through all the fires of affliction, and these fiery, fiery ordeals. So don’t be concerned.
“Whom God has afflicted for Secret Ends.
(E. Gospel) Blake
He comforts and Heals and calls them Friends.”
When you and I enter God’s Golgotha, as we are told: “And when they came to the place which is called ‘The skull’, there they crucified him.” (Luke 23:33) The word “skull”, which is translated in the definition of Golgotha, – another definition is the “Holy Sepulcher”. So now we know what the Holy Sepulcher is. It is our own wonderful human skull, that’s where he is crucified. But he is also nailed upon the cross. He is nailed through the feet and pierced on the side. Now here John gives so much time to the piercing of the side. He does not give the cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” John only claims: “It is finished” and then the soldiers shaft into the right side and out came blood and water. And down through the centuries they are trying in some way to explain it. They can’t explain it on anything that is biological, save that a birth always has the phenomena of blood and water. When a child is born the water is broken and there is a flowing of blood and water.
This is birth. To understand it we go back to the 31st Psalm: “Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” He promised it and He did it. That is only a symbol of one’s birth, which is redemption. So I say to you, don’t weep when you see it, rejoice, it was God’s sacrifice of himself because he desired to individualize himself in unnumbered garments, in all of us. God can’t beget anything other than God, so we are told in the 82nd Psalm: “God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” On God in the midst of gods – all is God. He is asking and begetting this Unbegotten Being. The cue is given us in the Book of Hebrews 5:6. It is called by a different name, it is called Melchizedek. He has no father, no mother, no genealogy. He is telling you who he is. Everyone who is Born from Above, – because God succeeded in giving Himself to that individual, – that individual has no genealogy. He is God the father. Believe me.
How could he give himself without knowing His son? I tell you the whole vast world of humanity is symbolized in a single youth, – called David. David is the whole world of humanity, in the language of symbolism. And the day will come in the second mystical experience in the nine month period, and here you look at David; and David is you r son and you know it more surely then you know anything in the world. There is no uncertainty when you look into his eyes and you see David and he calls you “My Lord, my father.” You know for the first time who you really are. And you turn to the world and you tell them what happened. But you are told, as I quoted earlier from Luke 18:34: “They understood none of these things; this saying was hid from them, and they did not grasp what was said.”
How can you persuade the individual that the day will come that even this very moment I could take the most orthodox Jew in the world, – if I went to Israel tonight, – and talked to the head Rabbi and asked him if he feels any relationship to David. He would say: “Only as the greatest of the kings of Israel; but relationship as to myself, No.” But he respects the great king of Israel, and hopes some day to rebuild the dynasty that is now gone. But he could not feel a relationship. And if I, in his eye, a total stranger, a gentile, would tell him I am his father he would spit in my face. To him that would be blasphemous; and yet I could tell him I am his father. I’ll go further, I’ll tell you, you are his father, and the day is coming it will be revealed to you. And when the whole vast world is completed and God’s work is finished; and he has given himself to every being in the world, – because he is the father of David.
To give me himself He has to give me fatherhood of David, – not just fatherhood. There is no need to give me fatherhood and not the father of his son. His son, yes. Psalm 2:7 “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” Then he takes this only begotten son to prove his gift to us by giving us that son as our son. And you look right into his eyes and he calls you “father,” he calls you “Adonai, my lord.”
I tell you the day will come when you and I will be the same father of the same child, everlasting eternal youth; that God in the beginning put into the mind of man and molded man into the likeness of himself. Read it in Eccl. 3:11. “God has put eternity into man’s mind; yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” The word translated “eternity” is the Hebrew word Olam. The Olam is translated, youth, lad, stripling. Listen to the words and see how we know who he is. The king wants to find out the identity of this fantastic youth that conquered the entire enemy of Israel, – he brings down the giant. So the king says to his lieutenant: “‘Abner, whose son is that youth?’ And Abner said, ‘As your soul lives, O king, I cannot tell.’ And the king said, ‘Inquire whose son the stripling is.’” No one knows. Now the stripling comes in with the head of the giant in his hands, the head of Goliath, the enemy of Israel. And the king said to him: “‘Whose son are you, young man?’ And David answered, ‘I am the son of your servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite.’”
Now prophecy was made in I Samuel 17:2.5. “That the father of such a lad would be set free in Israel.” Not the lad; the lad is buried in every being in the world. But the father of that lad, who knows he is the father, he is set free in heaven, free in the New Israel. So when one knows he is the father by actual experience; at that moment he is free in Israel. The 6000 years of turmoil is over for him; but David is still to be redeemed, to be discovered in the minds of all. And everyone is going to find him, and finding him they will find the relationship of himself to that lad; and we all will be one and our name one when the curtain comes down on the final act of this marvelous play.
Blake said: “Do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection.”
Everything is ordered, everything is perfect. God planned it just as it has come out and as he willed it, it will be consummated, and no tyrant in the world is going to stop it. He will take all the tyrants in the world and use them in the fulfillment of his purpose, as we are told in Proverbs 16:4: “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” Everything, not just a few. For it takes the wicked being to cross your path to add a little more fire to bring you closer into the image of God. If it takes many to cross it, they will cross your path.
What man looking at this garment we are wearing now could ever see him in the image of God. But this is not what is molded; this is only a form on which he is molding himself. When he has finished the molding then comes this fantastic experience in you; and you awake in a tomb. And the tomb all along was a womb; that was where you were crucified and you didn’t know it. And one day you awake in a tomb and the tomb is your own wonderful skull; and that is the holy sepulcher.
This week thousands of pilgrims will go to Jerusalem, to the holy sepulcher. And some priests, quite innocently, will point out a place and say “That’s it, that’s where he was buried.” He wasn’t buried there at all. There is no holy place in Jerusalem. The holy place is your own wonderful skull; that is the holy sepulcher, that is where he is buried. And that is where he is sound asleep dreaming with you these visions of eternity until you awake. When you awake you are he and he is your very own being. It is his purpose to give you himself, and there is no way in eternity that God can give you himself and prove it, unless he also gives me his most precious possession in the world, – and that is his son. He doesn’t give me his son to walk the street with me as a companion; he gives me his son as my son. So I look right into the eyes of the son of God and know him to be my son.
Then I wonder, how could this be? Here a man a few years old, weak, limited, with all the frailties of the world, all the weaknesses of the flesh, and yet, God so succeeded in his purpose for me, that he, the unbegotten gave me himself; therefore, I am unbegotten. Though I seemingly had a beginning in time, with the gift of God, the unbegotten, I now cease to be begotten. I have no genealogy; I have no father, – I am father, – the father of his only begotten son. I tell you this is a mystery. But mysteries of this nature are not matters to be kept secret but truths that are mysterious in nature. They are not things to be hidden. The minute they happen to you, you tell them to encourage every being in the world that in spite of the furnaces of the moment to continue, keep on moving, for you are moving anyway. But the end: – listen to the words: “O God, faithful Lord.” He has kept his faith, he promised me in the beginning he would do it. “Thou hast redeemed me.” And then sent me through furnaces without my consent, without my permission.
Take the story of Job. Here is one subjected to all the most horrible experiments in the world produced by God. And in the end he said (Job 42:5), “I heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” He sees the only thing in the world is reveal God to himself, because God is invisible to the world; but his son reveals God. “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” So, how will I ever know God? When his son comes in to my world and looks me in the face and calls me “father”, then I know God.
And yet in spite of this may I tell you, the day will come you will still be taken into the presence of Infinite Love. And you don’t have to ask who you are or anyone in the world who he is. As you stand in the presence of Infinite Love he embraces you; and you know who he is and who you are; for at that moment of the embrace you become one with the body of Infinite Love. Yes, that God is Almighty we know. But almightiness and omniscience are but aptitudes of God. God himself is Love, absolute Love, and I can’t describe it except to tell you it is man. When you look at him, Infinite Love, and he embraces you and you are lost in the body of God again, one with it, it is your body. And then he comes to the final journey. “And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe.” (John 14:29)
So I share with you my experience; and remember it because it is going to happen to you. When it happens to you, you will not differ from any other being in the world to whom it has not yet happened. But it is going to happen to every being in the world, but you will be one with those to whom it has already happened. And when it happens, – it may happen to you tonight, – you’ll wear the garment for a little while and then in the normal process of time you will take it off. Then at that moment of the discarding of this mold that God used to mold Himself, you will be one with the gods. Your entire inheritance is to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Believe me.
What that garment looks like, I can’t describe it. I can describe the sensation, but it doesn’t make sense to anyone in the world. But the final act, when he ascends into heaven, and you ascend and live, – I can only describe it as the seraphim. A golden, golden liquid being – and you ascend as a serpent. It doesn’t make sense does it? A human serpent, as described in Isaiah 6:2. The face, the hands, the feet were human but he couldn’t describe the glory of the body. It is simply golden liquid light. Because in the resurrection man is above the organization of sex. This garment he used to mold himself and to give man himself.
Blake brought it out in his wonderful poem called
“The Gates of Paradise”
“When weary man enters his cave, he meets his savior in the grave;
some find a female garment there, and some a male, woven with care,
Lest the Sexual Garments sweet should grow a devouring winding sheet.
One Dies! Alas! The Living and the Dead, One is slain, and One is fled.”
If this is slain, the mold, it is over. No need for the mold anymore, for he wove among this divided image, male and female, the garment that is immortal, which is above the organization of sex. So he discards then this divided image as far as that individual goes. He is now clothed in his immortal eternal body and no need for the divided image on which God molded himself and gave Himself to us; that being, being Jesse, which means “I AM”. The same name as Jehovah, which is “I AM”. The same name as Jesus, which is “I AM”.
So I tell you that fantastic mystery of crucifixion. It is true. It begins the play of God. If I went to a play tonight and saw a three hour movie before me on the screen, – I could, as many people do, misconstrue the role of the actor and make of him, as people do here of a movie actor or stage actor, – make of him an idol, ask him for his signature. Do all kinds of things that make of him an idol. And then, making of him an idol, he hides from me the message of the play. Here is a play condensed into a few hours that took six thousand years to unfold. And so man’s misconception of Jesus Christ has made of Jesus Christ in the eyes of all Christians, an idol; and that idol hides from that man who holds him up as an idol, the true message of God.
God’s purpose is to give himself to us without an intermediary. No intermediary between God and you. Actually he is begetting himself; on you, because He is without origin, the unbegotten. When he begets himself in you and gives himself to you, completely individualized as you, – and you have no origin, and the reason you have no origin is the child, and you see God’s son as your son. Then you will know who you are: the being without father, without mother.
It’s a strange thing to say that I a little thing a few years old, – that some fantastic mystery could take place there and here is this garment which began 58 years ago; and yet on this garment, and the garment which undoubtedly began that preceded it, something was being molded that was unbegotten! And when it was completely knitted to its perfection, and then I wore the garment that was molded on me, with all the pain that I went through; that I was the being who molded it. And the being who molded it is unbegotten. So the garment I wear, the immortal garment, though begotten, it is being worn now by the unbegotten, God the father. You dwell upon it.
If what I have told you this night seems strange, – if you are here for the first time, or maybe you are here for the hundredth time, it still seems strange, – but it is true. Everything I have told you is true, I have spoken to you from my own spiritual experiences. We are all on a fabulous pilgrimage moving towards some invisible shrine and God is awakening in us. The world round about us will go on in their journey; and when we are singled out one by one they will laugh at the very thought that he who died a normal death as any other man was that exit, – his final exit; and she by that experience, – do they talk about it, eternalize it? They smile and continue the journey. Perfectly all right. But I tell you, you too will be called out of the pilgrimage and the voice will speak out of the vast sky: “God walks with them.” And someone will question the voice, and the voice will answer, “Yes” and they will turn to you and they will be just as hysterical as they were with me. And the voice in the depths of your own soul will tell you: “God laid himself down within you to sleep, and as he slept he dreamed a dream, he is dreaming that he is you.
And then you will feel the wonderful thrill of being nailed upon this body. But O what a thrill! These whirling vortexes, no pain just joy, ecstatic joy. And then you are on the bed alone and the journey in the soul continues, but they are moving on, but you cannot rest from that moment on. Everything changes. You see people as you saw them and still they are different. You know their future, you know what they are destined to be; that everyone is destined to have the experience; and to remember in that ecstatic moment where unnumbered ages before he was nailed upon the cross through God’s love.
“Unless I die thou canst not live;
But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me
And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist.”
And this is the wonderful mystery of life through death. Now here is our story for you this night.