Neville Goddard (July 25, 1968)
Whenever you and I use our imagination unwittingly, we are asleep. We have to awake to God’s Law and His Promise. We are told in the very first chapter of Genesis, “And God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And it was so.” (Genesis 1:29) Here we see the Law of the Identical Harvest, and you and I will not in Eternity violate it. We try to. Man has tried through the years to break this law.
We are told, “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (Galatians 6:7, RSV1)
“Therefore, do not grow weary in well doing,” (Gal 6:9) for if we persist in it, in due season we will reap if we faint not, or lose heart.
Now, everything brings forth after its kind. If you really believe that you are the child of God, you will rest confident in that knowledge – in that seed, knowing that it can bring forth no more – no less – than God. If I really believe what Scripture teaches – “know ye not that ye are the sons of God, sons of the Most High? Nevertheless, you will die like men, and fail as one man, Oh princes.” (Psalm 82) – I will accept that. As a son of the Most High, what can I bring forth but God? Whatever He was prior to my being planted – for I am planted in death. All seeds must first die before they can bring forth. This is the great mystery. So, if I’m His seed, His sperm, His son, His child – whatever you will – then I’m quite willing to go through this Eternal world of death, knowing in the end I must emerge as Eternal Life – as God Himself.
In the meanwhile – while I am here – don’t try to violate the law. You can’t do it. Man has tried it, and he only produces a mule. We have taken – well, the horse and the donkey. We have millions of them in the world – mules. We cannot produce in the mule that which can bring forth its kind. It’s sterile. It’s impotent. I have seen the crossbreed between the lion and the tiger, but it, too, is a mule – beautiful to look at, but it is impotent; it’s sterile. I have seen birds that men mated. Normally they would not mate, but men forced them into mating and they have brought forth beautiful offspring; but the offspring is a “mule.” It will not reproduce itself. So, God has placed a limit to man’s mis-creation, so that you and I may speak in the world of Caesar of man’s evolution, and we think it’s part of God’s creation. It is not part of God’s creation. God finished it, and it’s perfect. The seed contains within itself all that parents have contained. If the seed is of God, well, then, it can only unfold as God.
I can see evolution related to man and his affairs. Instead of digging the earth with my hand, I turn to a hoe, and then from the hoe, I turn to a plow, and from the plow to a tractor. Well, I can see the evolution in that, concerning the affairs of man. Instead of moving across a body of water on a raft then I took a sail, and then I took a paddle, and then I took a steam, and now we take atomic energy. And instead of walking a distance, now I know I can fly and go almost as fast as man can imagine. So, I can see the evolution in the affairs of man, but not in the creation of God!
So, in the beginning it was established that all things will bring forth after their kind. [Someone enters the room a little late]. All right, come right in. We’ve only just started, trying to establish in us the awareness of God’s Law; that we cannot violate it, we can’t change it − to awake, as we are told. “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead.” So, Paul equates death with the sleep of man, when man is unaware of what he’s doing. So, when we are told in Psalms – the 44th Psalm: “Rouse thyself. Why sleepest thou, O Lord” – it’s addressed to God-in-man. Well God-in-man is man’s own wonderful human Imagination. So, every time that I imagine, and I am unaware of what I am imagining, well, then, I will not recognize my harvest when it appears in the world will deny I had anything to do with it, but if man is as I think and I know he is – all imagination, and if God and man are one, then God is all imagination. So, we say Man is all imagination and God is man, and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself − the eternal body Jesus. We are His members.
So, everyone can imagine. The thing to do is to become aware of what we are imagining, and put no limit to the power of imagining. Do not put any limit to God’s power.
Here is a simple, simple example. This friend of mind down south, Benny Gould − a friend called him and said, “You know, our little daughter, six months old − the doctor says she will not live the week; that she now has meningitis, and the crisis is now.”
My friend Benny, instead of sympathizing with this father − he bawled him out. He said, “Didn’t you tell me that you are a good Christian? You go to your Baptist church, and you consider yourself a good Christian? I don’t go to the Baptist Church. In fact, I don’t go to church, but I consider myself a good Christian. What are you doing accepting the verdict of the doctor? Why can’t you now accept the teaching of Scripture and believe in your heart that the little girl that I saw a matter of moments after she was born is now alive and thriving?”
After he bawled his friend out, Benny put the receiver up and then sat down and heard that man’s voice, as though he called him on the telephone; and the he heard the man tell him that the child has miraculously recovered. That’s all that Benny did.
That night a lady had a dream, and because it was related to Benny, she called Benny the next day and told Benny the dream, and this was the dream. She said, “I had a strange dream last night, Benny. I dreamt I was in a hospital, in the lobby, and two nurses were discussing a certain case of a friend of yours, a little girl, and one said to the other, ‘But who paid for the operation? Who paid the expense of the hospital?’ And one nurse said to the other, ‘Benny did.’”
That was only a dream. Well, Benny did pay for it – not in dollars and cents, he said the price. The price was that he represented the father to himself in a different way altogether, not complaining, not feeling sorry, not feeling sad at heart, but he heard that man’s voice with a joy in it telling him that the little girl had recovered miraculously. That’s all that Benny did. Well, that’s paying the price.
You are told, “Come, eat and drink without price. Buy milk – buy it all without money.” Well, the price that Benny paid was to exercise his talent wittingly, knowingly, on behalf of another, and to do it lovingly.
So, every time you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are actually mediating God to that other. So, if you become awake, you are awake to God’s Law. You can’t violate it. “Be not deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (Galatians 6:7) And, then, we are asked to not give up; if it seems long, wait anyway, because the harvest will come. In due season we will reap if we faint not – if we do not lose heart.
So, anyone here tonight who has a problem – I don’t care what the problem is, the problem will yield its own solution. You don’t have to discuss the means. That’s not the solution. If I needed money, knowing the right people – knowing people of money, knowing people with means – that is no solution. The solution is having what I want in this world. That’s the solution.
If I were unsheltered tonight, what’s the solution? Knowing a friend who has a huge mansion with rooms not occupied? That’s not my solution. My solution is to be sheltered. So, no matter where I sleep, I sleep as though I am sheltered.
If I were in need of raiment, I would sleep as though I am well clothed. I am in need of money, I would sleep as though I had all that it takes, that I am affluent. I will do it in that manner. If I know what I am doing well, then, “faint not.” I did it. I planted it. Well, now, in due season I will reap it.
So, every man should become awake to this law. So rouse yourselves. “Why sleepest thou, Oh Lord?” (Psalm 44:23) Well, His name is “I Am,” so are you aware of what you are doing? I am speaking, then, to you. “Why sleepest thou, Oh Lord?” And just to be addressed as “Lord” – and I mean it when I say I address you as “the Lord,” for you are the Lord. If you are a son of God, you can’t develop in any other way, other than into God! So, we are destined to grow up into Him, the head, Jesus Christ the Lord. If I grow up into Him, the head, well, then, I am He. So, then everything, then, said of Him I must experience.
So, here I must awake to the Being that I really am – not just to hear it, but to really believe it to the point where I act upon it. Well, if all through the day I act upon it – do you know that even in dream you’ll act upon it? A dream, supposedly is something where man’s imagination – rather, his attention is the victim, and not the master. It follows all the phenomena of Life, but in dream you will get to the point that you do not find yourself the victim; you find yourself guiding your attention. And you’ll find yourself, in dream, modifying and changing a situation. The normal person in a dream doesn’t. He simply – his attention is the very slave, and follows everything, one after the other. But when you become awake here. You take it into the depth of your own being, in what the world calls sleep.
So, when I say “Awake, O Sleeper,” I’m simply appealing to everyone here to awake to God’s Law. For it is a law established in the beginning – the Law of the Identical Harvest. You can’t plant one thing and reap another. You could now sit here tonight in the assumption that you are – well, exactly as you want to be. I would not define for what you ought to want; I will ask you:
What do you want?
When you know exactly what you would like to be, and you deliberately assume that you are it, you’ve planted that seed. And in due season you are going to reap that harvest. Therefore, if you’re going to reap it, reap it wisely by planting wisely.
But all day long you’re doing it anyway. Man is doing it, but he’s doing it asleep; and therefore when it comes into being and he harvests this marvelous – well, whatever it is, he doesn’t recognize that he had anything to do with it. And the purpose of life is to become awake – to wake everything in this world. So, I know exactly what I did. I sat down and I dreamed myself as affluent. I dreamed myself is this, as that, as the other, and having done it, I have confidence in God’s Law. No man can divert it. I can’t plant one thing and reap another.
“You see yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum; the corn was corn; the silence and the darkness knew, and so is a man’s faith born.”
So, I can sit down and actually do it.
Here, Marion Anderson was denied the right to sing in the famous hall in Washington. She was not a member, and she was denied the right. She did not oppose it. She didn’t fight it. These are her words. She said, “They had a right. These are the Daughters of the American Revolution. That was their right. They are all members of that club. They are proud of it. Why shouldn’t they be proud of it? I simply would like to have sung in that hall. So, what did I so? I didn’t fight it. I didn’t argue it. I didn’t tell the press. I made no issue. I simply in my imagination sang in that hall. I stood on that stage and sang to a full house – an appreciative house. They loved all that I did, and I was invited to sing in that hall.”
Now you will say, “Well, Mrs. Roosevelt heard about it, and she then took issue with those who were the members, saying, ‘After all, this is tax-exempt property, and all of this is something that is on the backs of the taxpayer, and I feel that we should occasionally open the doors to some great artist.’” She might have given them any argument, and she was then the First Lady of the land. You will say, “Now that’s why they invited Marion Anderson.”
I say, “It was not.” Mrs. Roosevelt had to act as she acted because Marion Anderson acted first, and if one could only see what she did – not what Mrs. Roosevelt did; she was only the means to the end. The cause of the entire thing was one who did not argue, who did not protest, who did nothing; who, in her own heart, simply imagined that she had done it. And if you do it this way, you don’t have to fight in this world. You don’t have to argue with anyone in this world. Just do it.
I have seen people say, “No, it can’t be done. I am not going to let this go.” Well, all right, it’s your privilege. It’s yours. If you don’t want it, unload it. And then someone who really thought of something far bigger than they could have conceived imagined it. Then they come, asking the very one to whom they turned and said, “No, it can’t be done, and we do not wish any part of it” – then they came and they got far more than in the beginning they were willing to take for it.
I know these cases. So, you don’t have to argue. You don’t have to fight. You simply know what you want, and if you had it, what would it be like? How would you feel if it were true? What would you see in the world mentally if it were true? How would your friends see you if now you were the man, or the woman, that you want to be? Well, then, let them see you. That imaginal act – letting them see you, as they would have to see you, were it true – is the imaginal act being planted. You are sowing the seed at that very moment. And in due season, it must come to pass, for that vision of yours, as told us in Habakkuk: it has its own appointed hour,
It ripens, it will flower; If it be long, then wait,
— Habakkuk
For it is sure, and it will not be late.”
So, you don’t have to rush it, dig it up and see if it’s growing. You did it in confidence that God’s Law never fails. “Let the earth bring forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And it was so.” (Genesis 1:29) And as long as earth endures, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.”
Now, the seedtime is when you imagine a state – that’s the seedtime. That’s when you sow. And, then, in due season, you’re going to reap exactly what you sowed, so do not be deceived. You can’t sow the unlovely act and expect something other than the unlovely act to appear in your world. You can’t do it.
If you want someone in this world to be big in your world, treat him as though he were; not by flattering him, but in your mind’s eye treat him as though he were big. Think of him as important if you want him to be important.
I know, in my own case, my family had really no financial, social, intellectual or any other background of mention, but my mother did not allow her ten children to know that. And if any of us did anything that Mother – well, she wasn’t exactly ashamed of it, but she thought it could be better, and it was something that we really should not have done, she would then say to us, “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?” She made the name important. It had no importance whatsoever, but she made it important. So, she treated us as though we as a family were important. The result is that she lived long enough to see her family grow into importance in the community, all pulling their weight and being very important in their community.
Now, you can start it with any family in this world and treat the family as though they were important. Unfortunately, our parents think they are doing the right thing when they compare us to a neighbor and find us wanting. “Why can’t you be like So-and-So?” Right away it implies you are not as good as – and, so, if that’s the seed she is planting for the child, the child has to do that. But if you will take any child, and then – not flatter it, no – but in your mind’s eye see it as important, and treat it in your mine’s eye as though it were. See it successful.
I read here, oh, maybe eight or ten years ago the famous men in the theatrical world whose mothers always looked upon them as most important. Clifton Webb was one whose mother, from the time he was a little baby, treated him as most important, and they mentioned about eight or ten or twelve of them. Each rose to stardom in the theatrical world, because they had mothers who treated them in a different manner. And, so, the story came out in the magazine I read. I know it’s only based upon a single law, if the mothers knew it. Well, whether they knew it or not, that’s how they acted, and it’s simply putting into effect God’s Law.
So, when I say, Awake, O Sleeper, I mean that we are asleep if we are not aware of what we are doing – we are asleep. So, “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead.” And the sleep in most of us is so profound, we might just as well be dead. But become aware of the Law, and become aware of the Promise, and the Promise is that you are a child of God! As a child of God, you can’t grow into anything in Eternity other than God. You can’t possibly become anything but God if you are a seed of God.
So, if you believe it – if I believe that I truly am, as the 82nd Psalm tells me that I am, “Know ye not that ye are gods, sons of The Most High?” – all of you, not a few, no little elect, but all of you. Then he tells us what we must first encounter in order to do it. “You now will die like men. You will fall as one man, O princes.”
Well, if I am a prince, then my father must be a king; and if I am destined to become and take his place, then I must become one day, king – king in my own mind’s eye, and if he’s a father, I must become father. And that’s the entire story of the Scriptures.
So, to become aware of it is, then, begin to act upon it. You’ll find yourself acting upon it consciously, deliberately. You refuse to accept the negative suggestion of the press, TV, radio, or a friend; you will not accept it, any more than Benny did.
Benny simply put the receiver down, brought his mind upon the same voice, but changed the conversation. And it was confirmed in the not-distant future. That entire thing changed in the outer world to conform to what Benny had done in the inner world, all in his imagination.
So, this is simply becoming awake, rousing the God-within-us. And then, one day to your – well, surprise is not a good word for it because you are so shattered by the experience – that thereafter you can’t rub it out of the mind.
In my own case it happened in ’59 – almost ten years, and, yet, every moment of time I dwell upon it. I could hardly believe that this thing was so literally true – Gods’ Promise to man – that every child born of woman would one day actually discover that he is the Lord Jesus Christ! And when it happened to you, and the whole thing begins to unfold within you like a flower, one after the other – well, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. You don’t boast, within you like a flower, one after the other – well, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. You don’t boast. You don’t brag. You’ve not a thing to brag about, because the whole thing was contained in the germ, in the seed, in the sperm, of God; and it was placed in you. Well, if the whole of God is contained in His seed, and the seed is in us, when it unfolds, how can we brag? We can only be thrilled beyond measure, and be filled with awe and praise and thanksgiving that God so loved me that He actually became me, that I in turn may become God! And, so, I dwell upon that and let it happen. It unfolds like a flower. So, to everyone, no matter what you are tonight, you can start tonight to plant the world differently, but do dwell, above all things, upon the fact that you are the child of God. And as the child of God, you can only grow into the likeness of God – into God Himself! You have no other way to go. But we are warned in Scripture, it’s going to be quite a journey. But Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” Not to us – the preposition is “in.” It is revealed in us.
So, all the sufferings, as told us quite clearly in the book of Genesis – we have three major manuscripts from Genesis known only by letters: the letter J, the letter E and the letter P. No one knows what they mean, but we’ve given meaning to them. We speak of the J as the Jehovahites, we speak of the E as the Elohim, and we speak of the P as the Prophets. But no one really knows if whoever put the J, E and P there really intended that, but scholars have given that meaning to these letters. That’s all we know concerning the authorship of these manuscripts.
But in the E it does not begin with the first verse. The E manuscript begins with the 15th chapter; it begins with civilization – with Abram, and Abram complains to the Lord that he has no offspring, “and one born in my house of a slave will be my heir. And God said to him, That man will not be your heir, but your own son will be your heir, and then God caused a profound sleep to descend upon him and then said to him, in sleep, Your descendants shall be strangers, sojourners in a strange land, and there they will remain enslaved for four hundred years, but when they are brought out, they will have much.” An abundance will be theirs, but they must first go into slavery for four hundred years.
Well, the four hundred years is not four hundred, as you would measure years. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has, not only a numerical value, but a symbolic value. And four hundred is the last letter, the 22nd, which symbol is a cross. It is Taw, and the numerical value of the cross is four hundred. So, I will wear the cross of man – this is the cross that I wear. It’s four hundred years; it is a far, far longer time than that.
Blake – time and again he said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years dazzling around Thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is myself, Oh Lord, my Redeemer and Creator.” So, he always speaks of the vision of his deadly sleep that lasted six thousand years, but in Scripture it is called 400 years, because they are speaking of the symbolism of the number and of the symbol called the cross. So, as long as I wear a body of flesh and blood, I am wearing this cross of 400 years.
So, as long as I do it, I am enslaved. I am enslaved by this body, by its passions, by its ambitions, by its needs. I have to bathe it, shave it, wash it; and then it has all the normal functions. I must take care of the normal functions like a slave. I’m a slave of the body! The day will come, at the end of my long journey, that I will take off the body of flesh and blood and put on my body of glory, which will not need any of these cares whatsoever, for it will be spirit, and not flesh and blood.
So, I’m quite willing to accept what Scripture teaches me. Yes, I am a slave here. I know it, and I will continue. But while I am a slave, He awoke within me – completely awoke within me, with all the symbolism in Scripture surrounding me. And then came the next one and the next and the next, and the whole Scripture begins to unfold within the man who is still, as yet, a slave, as told us in Scripture. Then comes that end of the journey when he can say, “It is finished.” And the whole thing is done.
For, here, not only these Four Mighty Acts become yours, but so many lovely passages of Scripture, in the interval they are yours – to feel yourself one day lifted up and to hear a heavenly chorus sing – unearthly chorus, and here it is singing, calling you by name. When I wrote the story and called the little thing “The Search,” I was persuaded by the one who read my manuscript to use the pronoun he and tell it in the third person. But I did not hear the chorus say he, I heard the chorus call my name, Neville. And they said, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen,” and how can you take that simple little phrase, “Neville is risen,” and repeat it – this enormous heavenly chorus singing it, and get out of it what they did, I could never tell you. They never used other words, and yet the melody – the change – everything about it – the majesty of all that they are singing on three little words! And, then, I found myself clothed in a body of light. It seemed to be a body of air and light. I didn’t stand on the ground, and I didn’t walk. I glided. I did it automatically, as though it was an innate knowledge of what to do, and I came upon an infinite sea of human imperfection: blind, lame, halt, withered – all of them, and I knew intuitively that they were waiting for me. And as I came by I had no compassion – none whatsoever. I didn’t stop to inquire. It was obvious that this one was blind, that one was lame, that one had no arms, that one was missing some other limb, and, yet, strangely enough, as I glided by, I did not raise a finger to change them, but they were automatically changed in harmony with the perfection I felt springing within me. Because I walked by as the Perfect One, everyone had to be in harmony with me, and everyone was made perfect. And the chorus is singing. And when the eyes came out of nowhere and fitted into these empty sockets, and when arms came out of nowhere and fitted into the empty socket, and legs, and everything was made perfect at the very end of this enormous journey, then the chorus exulted, and they cried out, “It is finished.” From repeating, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen,” in their own marvelous way, now they change it to, “It is finished.” And then I felt myself actually condense into this little garment here called Neville. I was actually the most imprisoned being imaginable, from that wonderful exalted state of freedom.
So, I can’t tell anyone what’s in store for you – that body of glory when you put it on. I simply tasted of it for that moment, that right coming through the Caribbean Sea from Port of Spain to Mobile, Alabama. We were at sea about seven days, and this happened one night while I was at sea.
So, I know exactly the feeling of the risen body – that feeling of the glorious body, where everything that you touch or see must conform to you because you are perfect. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” And, so everything in your world is going to be changed. You don’t stop to change it; you don’t do a thing. It simply changes as you go by.
So, everything in Scripture, you, one day, will prove literally – prove it to be true, but not on this level. You are going to prove it in some remote area of your own soul. So, first of all, believe in His Promise. Believe that you really are the Son of God, and as the Son of God, you cannot grow up into anything other than God – not in Eternity. But while you are enslaved in this world, in a place that is really not home – everyone feels a stranger here. They try build something to feel secure – to feel not a stranger, but they are still strangers, and all through the day and night, they are leaving, dropping out, and departing out from this sphere – leaving you behind. Then you’ve got to depart and leave others behind. The whole thing is a strange world. It is not home. So, we are strangers in a strange land, enslaved in the strange land. Therefore, while we are here remember His Law – the Law of the Identical Harvest, that you can’t fool God, so “be not deceived. God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.” And, then, because you are going to reap it, do not grow tired – do not grow weary in well doing. Do it every moment of time, though you do not see the immediate harvest; do it anyway because you cannot fail to reap that harvest.
So, do it. Spend a little moment every day, and deliberately plant loving thoughts, loving seeds. Bring before your mind’s eye those that you know as friends. Represent them to yourself without their knowledge, without their consent, in some lovely manner. When they conform to that in the outer world, you don’t need praise. You don’t need to tell them, “That’s what I imagined for you.” You know. You have the satisfaction of knowing what you did; therefore they will conform to it, and you will see them, and you will reap it, and you’ll have the satisfaction, without having them feel obligated. If you tell them what you did, they will feel almost obligated to do something for you in turn. You don’t want anything in return. You simply do it because you enjoy the doing. And as you do it, it becomes more and more a habit, and every moment of your conscious life you’ll be doing it, instead of wasting your time with all the unlovely and negative things. You ignore that and do it deliberately in the loving things. And when you read in the book, that 40th Psalm “In the volume of the book it is written about me.” Believe it. It’s all about you. Man doesn’t know it, but the whole book is about the individual, that’s your biography. So, in the volume of the book, it is all about me. Then when you read it, you will realize it’s going to unfold in you and, and you’re going to scream it from the housetops and tell everyone without boasting – because it’s about them, too. Everyone can speak in the first person, present tense. It’s all about me, and then one day he’ll experience it and know it really is all about me. And the book was simply a foreshadowing. The whole thing was a blueprint – a prophetic blueprint of your life. And you enter the world of death, that world of slavery.
So, when Blake, in his greatest of all poems – he said, “The poem is not mine. The authors are in Heaven; they are in Eternity. I’m only the secretary. It was dictated. It came to me twelve, twenty and thirty lines at a time, and what should have taken a lifetime of labor came in no time at all.” That is his great poem “Jerusalem.”
First of all, he begins it by first stating the theme. He tells us “Of the sleep of Ulro! And of the passage through Eternal Death and of awaking to Eternal Life.” Then he says, I in them and they in me – all in One. Here it is “the sleep of Ulro.” What is “the sleep of Ulro”?
But we pass through Eternal Death, he makes that statement – but we will awaken to Eternal Life. He’s quite willing to admit it’s going to be a hard passage – a difficult passage, but because we are the Seed of God, we cannot fail, and one day you will erupt, and it’s God erupting – all in you, and you are He.
If you dwell upon it, I tell you from my own experience what it will do for you. You will not be arrogant, but you will meet not one person in this world that you will bend the knee to. You refuse to accept any being in this world as an aristocrat beyond you by the simple descent of the flesh. No, the only aristocrat that you will admit is the aristocracy of the Spirit – no other aristocracy whatsoever, no line of the flesh, for you are not flesh. You are wearing a garment of the slave – that’s flesh, but you are Spirit. You are the child of God, and God is Spirit. That is the only aristocracy that you will admit. And the day will come that you will prove it to yourself, and you will enter a heavenly sphere, and, strangely enough – from my own experience – when you enter this sphere consciously you’ve always known them! You know them more intimately than you know anyone here on earth. When you meet the Brotherhood, you know them more intimately than you know anyone here. I knew my mother, my father, my brothers, my friends, my wife, my children, and yet I know none of them as intimately as I know my Brothers in Eternity. And they are all Eternal beings.
So, when I take this off for the last time, there will be no waiting between the taking off and the putting on of that garment which, for one fleeting moment through the night, I was allowed to wear. I tasted of the joy to come that one night in ’46 coming through the Caribbean. So, I know exactly what is waiting when they say, “Neville is dead.” Far from dead, he will be clothed in his glorious body.
Yes, the little garment will be dead, and they will cremate it and turn it into dust, and what they do with it, I don’t really care. I only hope my wife will be wise enough not to allow the morticians to burden her with all kinds of nonsense, keeping a little urn alive and paying rent on it. I told her, “Just have a little fun. The law demands that you’ve got to put it in a box. Well, get the cheapest box in the world – any box. They will burn it up anyway. Get the cheapest little box and burn it up, and don’t you pay rent on the little ash. If they will not allow you here to dispose of it, well, then, make some excuse and say, “Well, it must go to Barbados,” and then they will allow it. When it goes to Barbados, they will throw it into the sea, or throw it in the dust. That’s where it belongs – right there in the dust! But don’t make some little icon of it – no place where you can go and say ‘This is Neville,’ for I’m not there at all.
I’m clothed in my glorious body, a body that is eternal – it’s immortal. And I know what the body feels like, and I know what it is to be in it. I can’t describe to anyone the exaltation of just wearing the body. You feel infinite power, and yet you are man. You are a man. And here everything turns into beauty as you glide by, and you need no light, you need no sun, you need no moon, you need no stars, for you are light unto yourself. Not a blinding light, but a radiant light – enough to illuminate anything you want in this world as you go by. There’s no need for the sun, no need for the stars, no need for the moon, no need for any external light. You are the light of the world. That I do know from my own experience.
So, here tonight, when I say, “Awake O Sleeper, and rise from the dead”, I’m appealing to you to become more and more aware of what you are imagining, for as you become more and more aware of what you are imagining, you are awakening. And, so you become every moment of time aware, and you refuse then to allow your imagination to entertain the unlovely things in the world, and you simply put it on the lovely you do it, and that moment that you do it you plant it, and then you have confidence in God’s unbroken law that it must come up, that you may harvest it. In due season it will rise, and in due season you will harvest it. It’s a law established in the very first chapter; read it in the 11th verse. It’s stated so clearly and so perfectly that no man can break it, and then it is captured in the last verse of the 8th chapter: that as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest shall never cease.
So, seedtime – you have it. Every time you imagine anything, that’s seedtime. And the harvest must follow; it can’t precede it. So, you have seedtime and harvest established forever and forever as long as the earth endures. And you are the one spoken of in 8th chapter. It is to you that the whole thing is addressed, for the whole thing is about you.
Now, let us go into the Silence.
Questions & Answers
Good. Now, are there any questions, please?
Question: What about prophecy?
Answer: Prophecy? As far as I am concerned, prophecy is over – true prophecy. Fortunetelling, I do not go in for it teacup leaves and cards, astrology – all that is simply – well, abracadabra. But if one believes it, it will come to pass, because you’re working on the Law of Belief. But when it comes to prophecy, prophecy is over. The Bible, the entire Old Testament is one of prophecy, and the one in the New is the one who came to prepare the way – John the Baptist. That is the end of the prophecy. Now it’s fulfillment. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and now is the time of fulfillment of the Kingdom. We’re entering the Kingdom – all of us, because the whole thing is over and has been proven true. The first to rise from the dead opened up the door, and all are rising into the Kingdom, clothed in bodies of glory. No more prophecy.
But if someone wants to sit down and read you the cards, be amused, but the chances are they are always so negative. They sit down and tell you the strangest things, and you are all carried away emotionally, and you are planted. Right there, you are planting. And then you will say, “How wise they were! It came to pass. Because it’s going to come to pass, if you accept it and give credence to the thing, it will come to pass.
Question: What about some one like Jean Dixon?
Answer: They never tell you when they fail. They will always tell – if I prophesy a thousand things, I’ve got to get one. If I take all the nominees now, and I tell each, “You are going to get it” – well, there are only about five or four. I will omit the last three, the Communist fellows – they haven’t any chance. So, I won’t tell them, but I will tell the other parties – the three parties – each, “You are going to get it.” Well, I will guess one out of the three anyway; that’s a good mark. So, you can’t fail. If I get one out of three, that’s a tremendous percentage. So, tell them all. That’s what the world does. So, she comes out, and what she said to one person, she publicized because it came to pass, but she wouldn’t tell you all the others that didn’t.
Question: [Inaudible on tape]
Answer: Well, my dear, always do everything in the present, as though you had it. Always go to the end, as though you had it. The end is where I start from. The minute you say, “Yes, but –“ then you don’t believe it. You say, you need the money now.” Well, I say, “Assume that you have it now.” “Ah, but – “Well, then, you haven’t assumed it at all! Walk through the door just as though you had it. You might stumble on it out there. Walk as though you had it. Live in the assumption of the wish fulfilled. Live in it as though it were true.
[Question inaudible on tape]
Answer: Well, I tell you one thing. We have a vivid, vivid example of it right now. No one wanted the White House more than Johnson, but he had to take a second place, but he got the White House, and not by election the first time. He went down to that convention convinced that he was going to get it, and then Kennedy got it. Kennedy lasted three years, and made his exit at the hand of the assassin, and then he stepped right into the breach within a matter of hours -– well, minutes, really. Then he got the election on his own the second time. But no one wanted it more than he did. So, here you find a perfect example that, although he didn’t get it, he got it. So, I will say to anyone – I wouldn’t say, “You can’t get it” – I would say to anyone, “Assume that you are sleeping in the White House.” But will they believe me? The chances are, they wouldn’t. That’s why they are running for office. They go to church as people wear a cane; they feel better dressed. When my father was a young man, he wore spats if he came to a cold climate, and a cane. That was in order. He felt undressed if he didn’t have that. My father-in-law wouldn’t be seen dead without a cane and spats. He died in ’42, but until he died, was dressed only if he had his cane – he had about twenty of them – and his spats. Well, now, people go to church in the same way. They don’t believe it. Why, Johnson goes three and four times on a Sunday morning. He goes with one daughter to the Catholic Church, with another daughter to the Protestant church, and he goes over with King to the Baptist church. For what purpose? That he may be photographed. Why a camera at every place that he goes? They have to be there, that the paper the next day can show how holy he is.
Question: Neville, as you went gliding across this group of people with these infirmities, did you have the feeling that you recognized these people – that they were people that had passed you in this life, or were they strangers?
Answer: No, Bob. As far as I am concerned, they were simply the unknown. Not one face did I recognize, and not one person interested me. I simply walked by identified with perfection, and they were made perfect.
Yes, Betty?
Question: [Inaudible on tape]
Answer: I would try it. I would definitely try it. I believe in taking God at His Word and trying anything. The mere fact that I can become aware of desiring to have the revelation, I will then take His Law, which is fundamental, and assume it – assume that I’ve had it. I doubt the average person really wants the revelations. A friend of mine dropped dead suddenly here three years ago. He was an author, a writer. He used to write for TV. In the old days of vaudeville, he had all the big shots, and Jean would say to me, “Neville, I love all the things that you do and all the things that you stand for, but I’ve got to live first.” He meant living – just playing the field. That’s all he meant: playing the field, and he thought that was really living. Well, one day, sitting in his room – he finally got married, and, sitting in the suite of rooms at the hotel in Los Angeles, he said to his wife, “Do you want to go shopping?” She said, “No, not yet.” “Well,” he said, “I won’t shave until you want to go out.” So, he was watching the TV – the early show. He got off the chair and fell right on his face. He was gone. It never interested him to the point of wanting to have the experience, yet he’s gone.
I say, don’t wait. Desire it now. Now, Jean loved me dearly. Another chap, when I got out of the Army by the application of this law, without hurting anyone – honorably discharged, I wrote a friend of mine who was in the Army. He’s a Freudian, and he teaches it. Now he’s in L.A. So I wrote him exactly what I did. I did not hurt anyone. I didn’t go A.W.O.L. I was called in and honorably discharged by the very man who said to me, “No. I disapprove.” My Colonel. The same one called me in and approved it, and I didn’t raise a finger. I simply applied it – applied the law. So, I told him. He ignored me completely – wouldn’t answer my letter. So, he remained in for the duration, and he got out at the end as the other millions got out, but he used to come to my meetings in New York City, and one day he said to me, “You know, Neville, I love coming and listening to you. It interests me. But you know what I do? I stick my feet into the carpet, and I hold onto the sides of my chair to keep my sense of profundity and the reality of things. You turn my daily bread into the substance of theory. I’ll have none of it.” He wants to be right down here on earth. Well, he was there on earth for the entire duration. I told him what I did. A simple, simple thing: I went to bed in the barracks, with all the other men around me, and I dared to assume that I was home in New York City, and that right before my eyes came that same sheet of paper – or similar – that my Colonel had sent back saying, “Disapproved.” And it came down this way, and then a hand from here – I didn’t see the face; I saw the hand, and the hand took a pen and scratched out the word “Disapproved” and boldly wrote in script, “Approved.” And a voice said to me, “That which I have done, I have done. Do nothing.” I awoke. I was wearing this watch that my wife gave me when I was drafted. It was 4:15. I did nothing. At the end of nine days the Colonel calls me in, and I was honorably discharged, and that same signature – his name was Bilbough, Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr. – his father was Senator from Mississippi. And that’s my experience. So, with the experience, I am sharing it with a friend, but he wouldn’t take it. So, I could tell Nixon tonight, or I could tell H.H.H. tonight or tomorrow, but they would say, “Do you have a PhD?”
The other day I went over here to the hotel – the St. Francis – Sunday morning for a late brunch. A lady came in – she and her husband came in. Well, I don’t talk to strangers. All of a sudden, she looked over at me, and she said, “Are you a native?” I said, “I come from Los Angeles” “Oh,” she said, “isn’t that nice? Isn’t that nice,” and she started talking. You couldn’t shut her up – just one word after the other. Then she said to me, “What do you do?” Well, what could I tell her? I said, “I write.” “Oh,” she said, “you do? Novels?” I said, “No.” “For magazines?” I said, “No.” “Well, then, what do you write?” I said, “Metaphysics.” Well, she didn’t quite know that. That was something that didn’t quite penetrate. When I said, “Metaphysics,” the word struck her because in the word there is the word “physics” – meta – physics. “Oh,” she said, “You must have a PhD.” Of all the things – I said, “No, I don’t have a PhD”; and then she kept on talking, talking, talking, and the poor husband was this way, and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t shut her up. Unfortunately I ordered something that takes a long time. I ordered broiled mushrooms and crisp bacon on toast. Well, that’s not on the menu; that’s a special order. So, I regretted that I ordered it. If I had only known, I would have ordered quick scrambled eggs. And, then, when I got up to go, she said, “Well, I’m going to pray for you that you win the Nobel Prize.” That’s an actual fact last Sunday morning in this City.
So, I will say to anyone, don’t ask me about my PhD’s or any other degrees. Just believe it. I am telling you what is true concerning my own experience. There isn’t one person named in Scripture as an author. Yes, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but that’s all anonymous. No one knows who they are. No one knows who wrote the 39 books of the Old Testament – no one. And, so, did they have PhD’s? Were they Doctors of Divinity?
Any other questions, please?
[Question inaudible on tape]
Answer: No, I would not give up. I’ll say this much: Be as the widow of Scripture. And she came and came and came, and the judge finally vindicated her. He said, “I don’t like the woman. I don’t care about the case, but she’s bothering me, and because she bothers me, I will vindicate her.” Only to get rid of her. Well, then treat God in the same way. He’s the Big Judge – and bother Him. You keep on assuming, “You told me, Father, to ask for it. I’ve asked for it in the way You taught me to ask for it. Did you send a man called Neville? He tells me that you sent him. Or is he lying? He tells me that if I dare to assume that I am what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny, that I’ll get it. Well, is he lying, or did You really send him? Well, if you sent him, then he’s your messenger. Well, then, why don’t you answer me?” Just bother Him, just as she bothered the judge, and let it come into your world.
A man comes at the midnight hour, and he wants something because a friend calls suddenly, and the man said, “My children are in bed and it’s late, and I can’t come down,” but because of his brazen impudence, he came on down and gave them to him. He wouldn’t take No for an answer – just wouldn’t take No. And people will take No. Don’t take No, because he tells you, “Whatever you ask, believing,” you’ll get it. Well, if He tells you that, hold Him to it. But people will pass the buck and say, “Oh well, it wasn’t God’s will.” Right away they say that, they’ve divorced themselves from God! God became you, and His name is “I Am.” Do you say “I Am?” That’s He. Don’t let Him get away with it, because the minute you say He on the outside – well, then, you are not believing.
“Unless you believe that I am He, you die in your sins.” That’s the story. I’ve got to believe that I am the being spoken of as He. Well, now, I will sleep tonight again and again and again and bother Him.
Question: The lady said, How do you find out what you are doing wrong?
Answer: Well, not the main question, exactly, why the delay? If she is doing what I am telling tonight to all people then she isn’t doing wrong! She’s not doing wrong. I went to the Colonel. I was 38 years old, and in the Army, and a regulation came down from Washington that any man over 38 was eligible. It didn’t say he would get it, but he was eligible for discharge. That rested purely with his commanding officer. He could not appeal it to the divisional commander. It has to rest with the battalion commander. Well, I went to my battalion commander. He allowed as much as: Yes, you are 38 years old, and therefore you can apply, so I applied. Four hours later it was sent back to my company commander – the captain, and the captain called me in and said, “I am sorry for your sake, Goddard, but the Colonel has disallowed it,” and he showed it to me. So I saw the signature and saw the paper. I didn’t protest for the simple reason, you couldn’t. This is the Army, and you can’t go beyond what they say is the regulation. So, the battalion commander had the final word. If he felt he needed me in the Army – why, I wouldn’t know but he thought he did, and so he said, No. That night I simply slept in my imagination in New York City, almost two thousand miles away, for I was down in Camp Thorpe, Louisiana; and here I’m sleeping on Washington Square in New York City, and that night, in my imagination, as I told you earlier, this is what happened. I still did nothing. Nine days later he calls me in, and after he gives me a tongue lashing for wanting to get out, he said, “Do you still want to get out?” I said, “Yes, Sir.” You can’t just say Yes to the Colonel, so I “sirred” him to death – Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir. “You still want to get out?” “Yes, Sir.” “Do you know the best dressed man in this country today is the man who wears the American uniform?” I said, “Yes, Sir.” “You still want to get out?” I said “Yes, Sir.” And I kept on “yessing” him to death, and then he got up and signed a piece of paper. He said, “Sign that other form,” and then that evening I was honorably discharged, and he came out to me – a nice chap – a big, tall, strapping fellow, and put his hand forward and he said, “Goddard, I will meet you in New York City after we” – and the emphasis was on we – “have won this war.” I said, “Yes, Sir.” No regrets. So I went off to my train and to New York City. He was doing his job. If I had to be in the Army, I would like to follow a man like that. He was a real leader – no question about it. I don’t imagine that man would have asked me to do something that he himself would not willingly do. I don’t believe he would. He was a real man – Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr.