Neville Goddard (May 10, 1968)
A god sent into the fires of experience is the only God upon whom to rely!
Paul knew this truth and urged the Corinthians to ‘Examine yourselves. Test yourselves whether you are holding to the faith. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course you fail to meet the test.’ Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ as being in you, Paul invites everyone to test him. How would you go about testing yourself? By determining your desire and believing you have received it! In the 12th chapter of Mark, Jesus is made to say: ‘Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.’ Now, here is a condition placed upon you. You must believe! You must dare to assume you are what you want to be and believe in that assumption! Then, if Jesus has not lied to you, your assumption will harden into fact!
Now, when you test Him, you, too must be faithful to the test. You have tested Him by giving Him a new model of yourself (or another) and he can’t be changing models every few minutes and produce anything but confusion! So you must assume the feeling of being the man (or woman) you want to be and having assumed it, you must remain faithful to that assumption so that he may have one mode from which to work. Then he can objectify it in your world. It is entirely up to you. I urge you to test him and when you find him faithful to his claim, you will have found the only God worthy of your attention!
Moses was told by God that when he went to the people of Israel and they asked: ‘What is his name?’ Moses was to say: ‘I am.’ He was to tell everyone that no other being has sent you, just I am. Then God continued, saying: ‘I have made myself known unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by my name ‘God Almighty,’ but by my name ‘the Lord’ I did not make myself known unto them.’ The name ‘Lord’ was known but not understood. You have heard it time and again: ‘I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior and besides me there is no savior,’ but do you understand it? We have all heard the great confession of faith as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,’ but it is not understood.
When I say: ‘I am’ God is speaking. You hear my words and because you see the body I wear called ‘Neville’ you think I am saying ‘Neville is God,’ but I am saying: ‘I am.’ I am unconditioned consciousness believing myself to be a man of a certain race and nature, but before I say anything to complete a thought, my unconditioned I amness is God. Can you believe your ‘I am’ is God? Can you believe it enough to trust him? Let me share an experience of a friend who is here tonight.
My friend wrote, saying: ‘While sitting quietly waiting for your lecture to begin I imagined hearing a certain voice saying the words I wanted him to say. I heard it, and as I rested in that quiet acceptance I saw a paneled door and wondered what was behind it. Suddenly my curiosity was answered, for the door opened and out came a white pig. Does this have any significance?’
It has tremendous significance. In the universal language of symbolism, a pig is the symbol of Jesus, the Everlasting Sustainer. The Lost Language of Symbolism by Bayley states: ‘The female pig symbolizes the Sustainer. Pictured are two pigs with crowns. One has upwards to twenty little suckling pigs being simultaneously nourished, and under the figure is the IC of Jesus, the Everlasting Sustainer, and under the other figure is the clover leaf and CR of Christus Redemptor.’
My friend saw the symbol of his own wonderful human imagination, for that is Christ. If you imagine a state, remain faithful to it, and it externalizes itself, you have found the creator of the world for by him all things are made and without imagination is not anything made that is made. When you discover how to make something, you have found him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, your own wonderful human imagination, the Everlasting Sustainer of all life.
Many years ago in vision I was in a large coliseum filled with beautiful trees and flowers. In fact the entire plant world was represented there. It was closing time and I was alone. Looking down I saw a little pig at my feet. Wondering what I could feed him, I picked him up and placed him on a desk. Looking around, I gathered branches, leaves, and flowers to bed him down for the night, so that tomorrow an attendant could care for him.
Then the scene changed and the coliseum became a huge supermarket. Again I looked down to discover my pig. He had grown in the interval, but was still not well fed. Opening a bag of meal I started to mix it, when I called out to my daughter saying: ‘Vicki, bring me a package of grain that I may feed the pig while I mix the meal for him.’ Then she said: ‘Daddy what will I use for money?’ and I replied: ‘Everything here belongs to us. We don’t need money.’ She went over to a pile of goods which was arranged like a serpent, and instead of taking a package from the top she took one from the bottom, dislodging the entire pile causing it to tumble down, revealing a single candle, lit. Then I said: ‘Do not rebuild it. Now that the candle is lit it must remain so and never be covered again.’
My brother, Victor, appeared just then to inquire as to what I was doing and when I told him. he removed what appeared to be white, thick gravy from a bag and added three handfuls to my mixture, as I awoke hearing these words from the Books of Job and Proverbs: ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord and when his candle shone upon my head, by this light I walk through darkness.’
Hearing the words so clearly, I realized they had great significance, so I began to search out the symbolism of the pig and found it to mean the Everlasting Sustainer of the world. I had found my imagination to be Christ Jesus, but I had not fed him well. I had neglected to exercise my imagination when the opportunity arose. Every day presents an opportunity for me to take my imagination and use it lovingly on behalf of others. If I hear people call in distress and do nothing about it I am not feeding my pig. If I want something and do not exercise my imagination towards its fulfillment my pig goes hungry. Having heard that whatsoever I desire I will have if I believe I have received it, and knowing it came from Jesus Christ who is my own wonderful human imagination, and yet not doing it, I am not feeding my pig. It was tall and rangy, but he should have been much fatter; however he had survived in spite of my neglect. So I can say to my friend: when the door opened and the pig came out, you saw the symbol of the Everlasting Sustainer of the world. Now you have proved to your own satisfaction that imagination creates reality, for you said that what you did in the silence came to pass in a very short interval of time.
In the same letter, he wrote this: ‘In my vision you were looking above my head at the branches of a perfectly straight tree. It was about three or four years old and came out of the top of my skull.’ This is the gentleman I spoke of a week ago and told him that, although he has no memory of the experience, he has been born from above. Now there is no doubt, for no one can have the tree of life growing out of his skull and not be born from above. If the tree is four years old, then he has not brought back the memory of any of the events, but if it is three years old then he still has time, and may bring back the vision of the dove.
This is the tree of life spoken in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark: ‘When the eyes of the man who was born blind were opened, he said: ‘I see men as trees walking.” The tree of life, having turned down into generation, is turned around at the second birth, the birth from above. ‘Unless you are born from above you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of God.’ Having gone down and given birth to generations the tree is reversed, thereby giving birth to regeneration in an entirely different world.
My friend emphasized the word ‘straight’ in his letter. When Saul was blinded by the light the vision came to Ananias telling him to go to the street called ‘Straight’ to the house of Judas. There he would find a man from Tarsus, for ‘I have shown him in a vision that you would put your hand upon him and restore his sight.’ Maybe my friend’s sight will be restored, for he emphasized the word ‘straight’ in his description of the tree which grew out of his skull.
The first time I had this vision, I was moving with those majestic beings of the awakened society with their trees growing out of their brains, when I saw a prominent man in the British government stick a tree on his head from the outside and jump in the hope that his tree would support him. But each time he fell flat on his face with the tree falling off his head, and I awoke laughing.
Blake said it so beautifully:
‘The gods of the Earth and Sea
sought through Nature to find this tree,
but their search was all in vain,
there grows one in the human brain.’
The only tree of life you will ever find is growing there, and it always grows up, not down. When you look at a chart of mortal man (the man who dies) you will see a tree with its roots in the brain and all the veins, nerves, and arteries going down as an inverted tree. If you saw that same man after his rebirth you would see the tree turned up and growing in a majestic manner. Now I know that not everyone brings back the memory of rebirth and the discovery of the Son. I can’t tell you why, but my friend’s visions of the past few months lead me to the conclusion that he has had all of them, but had not remembered.
But tonight the subject is ‘No Other God.’ Do not turn to any other god for the only God is your own wonderful human imagination. There is no other. The day will come when He will unveil himself in you as you. You won’t see another, yet it takes his Son to unveil you. Only the Son knows who the Father is and only the Father knows who the Son is. The Son unveils you by calling you ‘Father.’ Only then do you know who you really are.
Now, if imagining proves itself in performance, does it matter what the world thinks? Test yourself, for there is no other God worthy of your attention. He is the god that you tested in the fires of experience and have proven true. He always proves himself in the testing and if he does that, what does it matter if the world rises in opposition and calls you insane for blaspheming? Let them say what they want to, it will not matter to you when you have found the only true God.
Abraham called upon the name, ‘the Lord, the Everlasting God,’ which is the divine definition of Jehovah. The word ‘Jehovah’ (translated ‘Lord’) is ‘YAD HE VAU HE’ [pron. Yod Hey Vav Hey] which means ‘I AM.’ And the word ‘olam’ (translated ‘everlasting eternity and the Word’) in the statement ‘God has put eternity (olam) into the mind of man yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end,’ also means ‘a youth; a stripling; a young man.’ These terms are given to David as he stands before the king, who inquires after his father. When Saul asked his lieutenant: ‘Whose son is that youth?’ the lieutenant replied: ‘As your soul liveth O king I cannot tell.’ Then he said: ‘Inquire whose son the stripling is,’ and no one knows. Then David brought the head of the giant Goliath to the king, who said: ‘Whose son are you, young man?’ and David replied: ‘I am the son of your servant, Jesse, the Bethlehemite.’ The word ‘Jesse’ means ‘I AM.’ That thought is put into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what is placed there until the end of the journey.
You have carried this innate wisdom in your bosom throughout the centuries you have traveled on your journey from heaven to heaven. You didn’t begin here in your mother’s womb. You came out from yourself – the Father – and entered this world of death to conquer it, and you will. In the end you will unveil yourself to yourself by your Son, David of Biblical fame. This is the story of scripture.
When scripture fulfills itself in you and you tell it, do not be surprised if no one believes you. This has been true throughout the centuries. In the days of the earliest Christians there was no New Testament, so when they spoke of scripture they referred only to the Old Testament. They had no plans to write a new one, but as the revelations were experienced they looked to the Old Testament for their meaning. The New Testament interprets the Old. Without the Old there would be no New, and the New without the Old is stupid, for the New is the fulfillment of the Old.
When Jesus said: ‘I have come to fulfill scripture’ there was no New Testament, so the only scripture he could fulfill was the Old Testament. He searches the old scriptures to find the passages that parallel his experiences. The pattern of salvation is contained in Man, which in the fullness of time erupts like a tree bearing fruit. All of the things said of Jesus Christ are contained within that pattern, and when you break that shell the first eruption is your birth from above. Then come the second, the third, and the fourth revelations, as the pattern fulfills itself within you.
In the meantime while you are here in the world of Caesar, take this challenge and test yourself. Do you want to be other than what you are? Do you want some friend to be other than what he is? Without his knowledge or consent you can represent him to yourself as you would like him to be, and to the degree that you are self-persuaded, he will become it. No power in the outer world can change him; only [through] you, by actually becoming that which you have convinced yourself he is, will the change occur. There is no other way because the world is yourself pushed out. There is only one God. ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One,’ not two. That one is ‘I am.’ I didn’t say, ‘We are,’ I said, ‘I am.’
No matter who you see in the world, they only bear witness to what you are. So, without their consent or knowledge you, by the act of complete concentration, can listen to the sound of a voice, feel the touch of a hand, and see beauty for ashes, as you exercise your talent, which is Christ. Then one day you will see your pig, and I hope it will be good and fat. Mine was just a runt when I first saw it, but the pig grows with use. It is only a symbol, but the symbol of the Everlasting Sustainer of the world.
So tonight please believe me. There is no other God other than he who is your own wonderful human imagination. Turn to any other and you have turned to a false God. Now, make no graven image of God. ‘I am’ has no face. Unnumbered artists have drawn pictures of what they conceive Jesus to be, but he has no face. He is simply ‘I am.’ But he is a person for you are a person and he has a Son. Calling himself the Father he says: ‘When you see me you see the Father.’ Well, he can’t be a Father unless there is a child. And when His child calls you, ‘my Lord’ he is saying: ‘You are my Father, Jesse,’ which means, ‘I am.’ ‘I AM’ is looking at his Son, David, and when you recognize your Son you will say to yourself: ‘Now I know who I AM.’
I am telling you that which is entirely new and yet as old as the faith of Abraham. Man cannot believe it because he has been led astray by strange concepts as to who Jesus Christ really is. Jesus Christ is God the Father and as a Father he must have a Son. That Son is David. This I know from experience. I did not read it in a book. I never heard it from the lips of a man. It came by revelation. The tree of life bloomed and bore its fruit in me and every tree has the same fruit (the same story). There is only one story to be experienced in all, so if it hasn’t happened in you, don’t be distressed, it will. I know in my friend’s case it has happened, but he hasn’t remembered it. All I can say to him is: pray that you will remember.
Read the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts carefully and you will see that Paul did not realize what was happening to him; yet he was selected because of his peculiar talents, to do what he did. Others who remembered were not selected, but Paul, violent against the early Christians – bringing them shackled into Jerusalem to be beaten, and even consenting to Stephen’s death – was chosen. When he came to the street called Straight he was blinded by the truth. The Lord picked him out because of his peculiar qualities. He was a man of intense power. Everything he did was intensified. The Lord took that same power which was used for evil and turned it around to be used for good. Paul did remember when his Son was unveiled, for he said: ‘When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me I did not consult with flesh and blood.’ He did not go up to Jerusalem to discuss the matter with others, no matter how seemingly powerful they were. It never occurred to Paul to get the permission of anyone. He simply went about doing exactly what he was told to do by the one who revealed his Son in him. And there is no one on record who revealed more than Paul. I am not saying that you are the one, but it is my real hope that you are. Nothing would please me more, because I am departing. My time is short and it is my hope that you will be selected to tell it.
But tonight believe me: your own wonderful human imagination is the one and only God, so put him to the test. Know what you want and let him create it for you. Search for and find the feeling that would be yours if things were as you desire them to be. Look at your world – would you see it differently? Would those in your world see a different you? Create that scene, catch the feeling of reality and don’t let go! Don’t forget what you saw and how you felt, for he who creates in you must have a model to work with. Don’t be the double-minded man Jesus speaks of: ‘The double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. He looks into the mirror of life and sees what he looks like, then he turns and forgets what he was like.’ Do not turn away from what you have just imagined and forget what you really look like, but persist in the new state. Remain faithful to it and let the one within you (who is Christ the Lord) externalize it, for you and He are one. I don’t mean you and the Lord, but you are the Lord. There is only God in this world and you will know one day that you are He.
Now let us go into the silence.