Neville Goddard (June 08, 1970)
Paul tells us that whatever was written in former times was written for our instruction. When he speaks of things “written in former time,” he means only the Old Testament. He quotes no other book.
He doesn’t quote Plato, the Vedas, Upanishads, or any ancient book, – only the Old Testament; and he tells us that they were written – these books – for our instruction. He tells us they were all brought to fulfillment; that all the promises of God found their “yes” – their fulfillment in Him, meaning in the Lord Jesus Christ. He identifies the Lord Jesus Christ with God Himself.
Now he tells us that this is our hope. This whole picture of the past is man’s hope because God has completed His plan of salvation. What he is really telling us is that our brain actually backs up against Infinity, and Infinity unfolds itself creatively in us.
We cannot fail, for the whole drama is over, and our brain simply backs up against Infinity. So, we can only become what God already is. That is the story to us. It is God’s pledge to Himself; that God became man, that man may become God. We are actually backed up against Infinity – our brain; and the drama takes place, may I tell you? in the brain of man.
Now he tells us in his Letter to Timothy to keep this pattern that he has given to the world – keep it in a faithful manner, and do not depart from this pattern. He doesn’t spell it out completely, but he calls it the pattern of “the true word which you have heard from me” [2 Timothy 1:13], – that which was entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, – do not depart from this pattern of the true words which you heard from me.
Now the book is like this: I give you a map, and you can read a map, and you tell me where I would like to go on the map. The Old Testament is just like a map, but in this respect it differs, you tell me where I ought to go, based upon your ability to read a map. He could read the Old Testament; and when he found a pattern in the Old Testament, and the pattern that he found was this – the pattern as described in the Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, – and how different was this pattern when experienced from the pattern that someone would point out for you.
How different the cubic reality of this room from any artist’s depiction of it. Give an artist a piece of paper or give him a piece of canvas, and he can depict it beautifully; but how different is the cubic reality of this room when I am in it from any depiction of this room by the greatest artist in the world.
So, they give me a pattern. He is telling us that when you experience the pattern that I’ve given you, you will know it unfolds in you as God. There is nothing but God in the world! Think of your home that you know far better than you know this room, and yet this room at this moment is more real to you than your home. The pattern of Scripture is real. It’s perfectly real, but it will become all the more real when you actually experience Scripture.
Now he is telling us of the experienced Scripture, for he experienced the Lord Jesus Christ as himself. He tells us, Jesus Christ dwells in us. “Do you not realize that the Lord Jesus Christ is in you?”
Well, the average person, if he is honest with himself, he does not know that Jesus Christ is in him. The pattern is in him, because we are backed up against Infinity; and Infinity only unfolds itself in us. Therefore we cannot become at any one moment in time other than what God already is. He has already played the part.
The thing is over. But the awakening in us is not over. So, he warns Timothy that those who teach that the Resurrection is over, and past are misleading the people. It has happened, yes; but it is not past. It is taking place in man.
Now he points out the pattern – not every word. All the horrors are in Scripture. You cannot conceive of one thing in this world that is not recorded in Scripture openly: every vice, every horror, everything in the world. We think this is new? It’s all in Scripture. And who actually experienced it? The Lord experienced it all!
“Was it not necessary,” said he, “that the Christ should suffer and then enter into his glory?” [Luke 2:26]
Well, Christ-in-you is the one that is suffering. You have suffered. I know, I have, and still am, and will continue until I take off this garment that suffers; but having experienced the pattern, when I take it off now, I take it off for the last time.
But it doesn’t mean for one moment because I precede my brother in the taking off of the garment that I follow a different pattern; that I am better, that I am wiser, that I am anything other than what he is destined to be, for there is only one destiny: to awaken as God Himself. God is buried in man, and He plays all the parts in the world; and in the end, man awakens as God Himself.
So, he doesn’t single out the individual sections. He tells you it’s a pattern.
I will tell you, from my own experience, the pattern as I have experienced it in the end. I have tried to tell it. I have recorded it in words, but not all of it. Many parts I didn’t feel I should put in, because you are going to experience it; and you are going to feel, when you do experience it, that it has never been experienced before. The whole thing has been experienced and brought to its climax, as told us in the Gospel, leading the individual to believe – well, he did it. No; you are going to know by your own experience that “I did it.” The only one who was “born from above” – I did it. I am born.
Now there are these questions asked.
“And the Lord said. Can a man bear a child?”
Well, obviously you say, No. Then, “Why then,” did the Lord say –
“I see every man with his hands drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why is every face turned pale?”
Now in the same passage he tells you that he is the Lord, and “David is the king forever and forever,” – the same passage, the 30th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. Read it from the 5th verse through the 9th. He tells you who he is going to set up as the king forever. He is the Lord of Lords. You are going to have this experience, and you will know you do bear a child! It is translated: “Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor?”
And that little phrase, “with his hands on his loins” – “on his loins” actually means, by the Hebrew word, “pulling himself out of him self.” Just like a woman in labor, she pulls what she formed in herself out of herself. This was written in the day, – and even to this day, China, India and the fabulous lands of the world with these enormous populations, – they don’t go to hospitals and have their women put into a twilight sleep and have a child delivered. While they are in the fields laboring, they stop for one moment and draw with their own hands out of themselves that which they have formed in themselves.
Well, God formed us in Himself. We are the God – there is only God – and we draw our Self out of ourselves, out of these garments. There are two births, one below formed by a woman, and one from above formed by God; and he draws himself out of himself, just as the woman drew that which was formed in her out of herself.
Well, when you see the thing out of which you come, it is ghastly pale. “Why do I see every face so ghastly pale?” the question is asked. So, you draw it out of yourself. Every one is going to draw himself out of himself; and he who draws himself out is the God, and no one sees the garment. The garment has been removed, as we are told in Scripture So, you ask all these questions of the Pattern, and the Pattern unfold in us.
But do not stop only at the pattern. We are still in the world of Caesar, and we go through hell.
So, while we are here, learn what He gave us as the Law to cushion all the blows of the world. It is a simple law, but you’ve got to believe it, as you believe the most incredible story in the world.
How can I tell you to convince you that I have actually gone through the entire story that is recorded in the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ? When I stand before you, aging month after month, year after year, with the inevitable end where they will take the body and put it into a furnace; but I tell you, exactly what is recorded in Scripture – I – have experienced.
There is nothing left to be experienced. I’ve done it. Right up to the descent of the Holy Spirit in the bodily form of a dove, everything happened in me. And yet, here I am aging before you, and to come before you until that inevitable moment when the body has to be burned and discarded, and I leave you with only a pattern that I have gone through; and the pattern leads one to God Himself. There is nothing but God. This is a pattern that God went through. Well, he did not deny that he suffered.
“Is it not stated that the Christ must suffer, and then enter into his glory?
And then beginning with Moses and the Law and the prophets and the Psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” Read this in the 24th chapter of the Book of Luke [Luke 24:26, 27].
“Scripture must be fulfilled in me,” he said. There is not a thing in the world that I came to do but to fulfill my Word. He is the Word, and “the Word cannot return void; it must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” [Isaiah 55:11].
He is called the Word of God. He comes, then, to fulfill his own Word.
So, Scripture must be fulfilled in me – not a thing else. I may own the earth. Well, that’s not fulfilling Scripture. I may become anything in this world that I desire as a man, but that’s not fulfilling Scripture. Scripture has a pattern; and there’s a definite pattern, and that pattern is laid out for us in the Gospel, in the story of Jesus Christ.
It begins with his birth; but really it begins with his resurrection. The resurrection is his birth. I know that from my own experience.
We are “born anew,” said Peter, “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” That’s how man is “born from above,” – through the resurrection, when he awakes within his skull.
For that’s the skull – that’s the brain that is actually leaning back against Infinity. Infinity, having accomplished the entire thing, now unfolds Itself in the individual, so that man becomes only that which God already is. So, what he has already accomplished now unfold itself in man, and man duplicates within himself the entire story of Jesus Christ.
So, it begins with the resurrection, where he awakes. The resurrection is only an awakening. That’s all that it is. He awakes within himself. He’s been dreaming you, because God laid Himself down within man to sleep; and as He slept, He dreamed. He dreams your life, my life, our lives. He is dreaming the life; and then He comes to that moment in time when He simply awakes.
As Paul said, when he came to the fullness of the day, then he awoke. He awoke within man. Awakened within me, I then duplicate all that I have read in Scripture concerning another and it really is “Another,” yes, – it’s God, but God is the only Reality; so that Reality unfolds Itself in me. This is the reality, compared to any depiction of it. When I read the story or hear the story, that is simply like some one depicting it on a flat surface; and then when it unfolds within me, then I, experience the cubic reality of the story.
Now, in the story he tells us concerning a son. He names the son, but man with all of his wisdom cannot find out that Son, and the son is David.
In the story as it unfolds, David does stand before you, and you know who he is because it is a memory returning. If God has done it and then God unfolds in me, what is unfolding but the memory of God? He unfolds within me. So, Paul in that statement that I quoted tonight said, “the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Well, the Holy Spirit, we are told, is memory for –
“I will send you the Holy Spirit, and He will bring to your remembrance all that I have told you” [John 14:26].
So the Lord tells us He sends this memory. If He sends the memory of all that He has done and the memory unfolds within me, then it is called in Scripture the Holy Spirit unfolding within me and bringing to my remembrance all that He told me, for:
“All was foretold me: naught Could I foresee!
But I learned how the wind would sound After these things should be.” [Edward Thomas, from “The New House”]
After it happened within me – well, that is exactly what was foretold me; but I thought it was all about another, and it wasn’t about another at all. It was all about God, and it is God unfolding Himself in me! And He unfolds Himself in you. Every one in the end, is God! And there is nothing but God!
But I must suffer, as I am told; and you must suffer. The whole vast world is a suffering world for the end, and the end justifies all the suffering in the end, for in the end is only one Being that comes out, and the Being is God.
So, I go back – all the way back – to the beginning. He takes me back, and he began with the words of the Law. So, “beginning with Moses and the Law,” – and then he comes into the prophets, he has quoted one from the prophets; then he comes to the Psalms. “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord,” said the Psalmist. “He said unto me, Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee.” So, he took all the Psalms into consideration. He took everything from Scripture, and he said the Scripture is all about me, for “in the role of the Book, it is all about me” [Psalm 40:7].
Now he brings it completely to fulfillment – to climax, and then he tells us: Wait – wait until you are clothed with power from The minute you are clothed with Power from above, then He is going to unfold within you.
Who? – The Very One who brought it to climax.
So, Jesus Christ is in you, and Jesus Christ will unfold within you as you; and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other Jesus Christ. So, the whole vast world is redeemed, because it has already been redeemed by One having done it. And that One has formed the pattern. The Pattern is now in man to unfold in man as the man in whom it unfolds. And that’s the story.
So no one can fail! The most horrible being in the world – he can’t fail. He is only playing a certain part. He is in a state of consciousness that demands that he plays the part that he is playing.
If tonight I slipped into the part of a thief, I will play the part of a thief. I may suffer the consequences if I am arrested and go to jail and be locked in for the rest of my days, if I slip into that state. But I am not the state into which I slip. I am the Being that the world calls “God.” So are you.
When Blake was asked –
“What do you think of Jesus? Who is he?” without batting an eye, he said, “Jesus is the only God”; but he hastened to add: “So am I, and so are you.” [from “Auguries of Innocence”]
So, every one is this God-in-the-act-of-awakening, because the pattern is already set; but he said, “Follow the pattern of the true word which you have heard from me,” – God the truth – “which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Well, the Holy Spirit is simply the remembrance, for
“when He comes He will bring to your remembrance all that I have told you.”
Well, when he brings it to your remembrance, he doesn’t talk as something coming from without. He brings it into a three-dimensional, cubic reality, and you experience it. There is all the difference in the world between having heard the story of the birth of Christ and having experienced it.
Now I know exactly what it means when I read the story that he was born differently. He was “born from above.” I can tell you, “I came from above.” Speaking to himself, the lower man, “You came from below.” “I am from above and you are from below.” “You” came out of the womb of a woman; “I” came out of the Womb of God which is out of your own skull. For that skull of yours – that brain is simply resting against Infinity; and Infinity having completely accomplished it. Infinity now unfolds itself in you.
So, if I came from above and “you” rest against “me” and I am unfolding in “you,” you too will be born from above.” You simply unfold from above, as I, too, became a man. He became a man.
He became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross. He, too was born from below – not something entirely different. This whole thing happened just as you happened: You were born from below and you shall be “born from above.”
You were born from below, and you suffer all the hell of the world, for every one has suffered, may I tell you? Today you may enjoy the most perfect health in the world and the comfort of finances, and the comfort of being known and being recognized in all the lovely things that people strive for; but you have suffered. And if you haven’t, may I tell you? you will. No one will escape the sufferings of God, for God suffered – and if He unfolds Himself in you in detail – all that He experienced in the suffering, you are going to suffer.
But I will give you one thing. The Crucifixion is over. Don’t think you are moving towards the Crucifixion. That is over. That came in the very beginning.
“I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me, and the life I now life in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” [Galatians 2:20]
So, the Crucifixion is over, but the Resurrection is taking place. So, don’t think of that moment of the Crucifixion. That is completely over.
And I will tell you from my own experience, it was not a sad moment. It was sheer ecstasy. It was ecstasy when I was crucified. I can’t describe the thrill of the vortices on these six points of my body. Every one will one day have a little memory of that picture because it’s all over. It has already happened to all of us.
I happened to remember it one night when I led this crowd towards the Holy City. When the whole thing reenacted itself, it was sheer joy, not pain at all. But there is pain after the Crucifixion, and you have suffered, or you are suffering. I have suffered and am, and will continue until the very end. But the end justifies all the suffering because you will awake as God Himself. This is the only way that God expands, for there is only God. God seems to exist by constantly becoming – constantly becoming, expanding beyond anything.
Here is a drama. He’ll write another drama, maybe a more horrible drama, for His own expansion. But when He writes it, He will take us with Him, and we in the end are God, for the word “God” is a plural word, “Elohim,” – one made up of others. That’s God. So, all of us form God.
We made the decision in the beginning, and we actually conceived the play, and it was played and brought to its climax, and then each one after the other unfolds the same drama within him.
Why on earth should I look back and see that fact ghastly pale? I am a brown- skinned person. I am called “olive skinned.” I have never been accused of blue eyes and blonde hair, save as a child when my hair was white. But here I am olive skinned; and yet when I came out of it, it was pale – ghastly pale like death, yet moving its head from side to side, just as you are told in Jeremiah – that 30th chapter of Jeremiah
“Why has every face turned pale?” And then they will all come and worship the Lord and his king David. David is mentioned all the way through; and yet until it actually happens, having been trained as all Christians have been trained, they will never see that David is the Son.
David does the will of the Father; and in the end, this personification of humanity stands before God, who is the Father of humanity, and sees that personification as a single being, and it is David.
And then David calls you “Father.” And you know it. You know as though you have always known it; therefore it’s memory returning. The only thing that is coming back is your own memory! You had to completely forget who you are, to become man. So you emptied yourself of your God-hood and became man, and you are playing all these things here.
Now tonight there are those who want to know how to change the immediate present. Leave out the pattern, for if I am destined – and, as I say, you are destined, no matter what you have done, what you are doing, what you are going to do – you are destined to awaken as God the Father, the Creator of the Universe. You are destined for that.
But now, in the meanwhile, while I am still dreaming and I do not know where the next meal is coming from or a better job, what can I do? Well, it’s simple, but you really have to believe it.
Can I really believe that my imagination creates reality? Can I believe these words of Blake?
“Babel mocks, saying there is no God nor Son of God… That thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body, are all A delusion; but I know Thee, O Lord, when Thou awakenest upon My weary eye, even in this dungeon and this iron mill… Thou also sufferest with me, though I behold Thee not.”
And then the Divine Voice replies:
“Fear not, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from Death Thy brother who sleeps in Albion.” [from “Jerusalem”]
Just believe in Me. He equates God the Father with the human imagination; and he tells, now, Imagination: “Thou sufferest with me.” Certainly!
Could I suffer without my imagination being present? Take away imagination: you could cut the body into pieces; it could never suffer. Therefore, who suffers? So, the Divine Voice replies “I am with you always.”
Can you divorce yourself from imagination? Could you be any place tonight where you are not aware that you are imagining? You couldn’t. If you are any place where you are not imagining, what you left behind you cannot feel. You can cut it to pieces. But wherever you are and imagining, that’s Reality! So, – “… fear not, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death Thy brother who sleeps in Albion.”
So, let the world mock. They don’t know it. But may I tell you? they are forgiven, because the day will come, every atheist in the world – every agnostic in the world– will experience the story of Jesus Christ, and experience it in the first- person, singular, and a present-tense experience. So, forgive every one, no matter what he has done to you. Some of them use it only for a conversation piece just to get an argument. Well, I don’t argue any more with them.
You don’t believe in God? It’s perfectly all right. I will not raise a finger to persuade you. I will only tell you, one day you will know, and maybe by reason of the fact that now you do not believe in it and you are so vocal, you’ll become so filled with zeal to persuade others that God exists. So, it is perfectly all right. Let them go their way.
I tell you, every one is going to experience Scripture. “Scripture must be fulfilled in me.”
So, I begin at the very beginning, in Genesis, and I go through the entire Scripture, and you weave it like a pathway. And I tell you, the path that I have followed – much of it is suffering. And there are highlights – they are all glorious – the highlights.
Then comes the end when the Holy Spirit descends upon you; and when He descends upon you and you hear that lovely voice coming, and the voice says He loves you, and that is why he penetrates this ring of offense to demonstrate His love for you, and here you feel and see the symbol of the Holy Spirit dwelling upon you as a dove. It remains upon you, and it smothers you with love – nothing but love. And then you wake, knowing He is with you. He remains upon you; and forever and forever you are that Being spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus
But you know every one is destined for the same thing. So, we are all brothers behind the masks that we wear. So, if you are suffering tonight, may I tell you? – there is a Law given you. Listen to it carefully. It’s very, very simple.
What would the feeling be like if it were true that I am now, – not tomorrow, not next month, but now – the one that I would like to be? What would the feeling be like if it were true? Assume that feeling. Just assume the feeling of that wish fulfilled; and, may I tell you? in a way that no one knows, you in the immediate future will project it as a reality, as a fact.
The words from Scripture that support it are theses –
“Whatever a man says, believing, it will be done for him.”
Whatever any one says in this world, believing what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
“Therefore, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will.”
If you want the reference, it is the 11th chapter, the 23d and 24th verses, of the Book of Mark. These are the words of the One who completed Scripture.
I know from my own experience that when I have actually assumed, either for myself or for another – seeming “other,” for in the end there is no “other.” We are all brothers, all one, – that if I persist in that assumption and really believe it, it invariably comes to pass. I could not tell any one how it’s going to come to pass. I only know it contains within itself the power and the wisdom of Self-expression.
As I told you the story at the last lecture what I did with my friend Freedom. It was quite simple to me just to “hear” him play and to put my hands on his shoulders and to thank him for the joy he gave me in that wonderful piano concerto. I did it three times in the interval of one week, and then he called to tell me the piano came back.
Here, the average person would not have given him one dollar for the return of that piano, for at the moment unnumbered things are stolen between the pick-up and the delivery. And the truck disappeared the contents disappeared, the driver disappeared. I have not heard from Freedom since, to get the details; but he did say when he first called, they have found the driver in San Luis Obispo, but he refused to give then any news concerning the truck or its contents. So, they put him in jail, and had to keep him there for five days before they could bring action because that’s the law, but they put him in jail for five days. Now, why he confessed where the truck was, I do not know, but nevertheless he confessed, and they finally got Freedom’s piano. So he has it back.
I only know what I did. I do not know anything concerning the case, other than what I did after he called me. I merely assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled; and to do it, in my mind’s eye, I saw him sitting at the piano. I “heard” the music. I felt his shoulders. I felt the thrill and the joy that was mine because of what he did at the piano; then I felt the piano. And in a week the piano was located.
Now, I will say to any one – the driver who stole it – if I were now in judgment, I would forgive him. I don’t care what motive moved him to do it, I have reached the point:
“Forgive him, Father. He knows not what he does.” [Luke 23:34]
We all fall into these states: the state of the thief, the state of this, the state of the other; and forgive them. They do not know what they are doing! The occupant of the state is not wrong; it is the state, but these states were created in the beginning, and they are eternal states. They do not change, any more than this city changes when I leave it. The city remains, but I go on; but the city remains for any one else to enter the city. So I enter a state. The state remains when I leave the state.
So, if I am poor and I cease to be poor, poverty has not ceased to be a state. I may go on to a state of affluence; and affluence is a state, as poverty is a state. But the occupant entering the state lights it up, animates it and makes the state become real.
So, if I move into the state of the thief, I’ve got to steal. If I move into the state of the affluent or being poor, or being anything, I must express that state.
How do I enter the state? I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. That’s all that I do. You tell me what you want, as Freedom did. Freedom said, “I want my piano back. I’m only insured for two thousand dollars, but I can’t replace the piano for four thousand dollars. I want my piano back. That’s all that I want.” He was beside himself – too close to the problem to work for himself; so he turned to the one person in whom he had faith. And so, I just simply sat, in that week, on three different occasions; and the last one was the night before it came back. It came back at 4:30 in the morning, – of all the hours of the day to deliver a piano.
But that night, I turned on KPAC, and this lovely piano concerto was coming through, and I used it to aid my imagination and I imagined I was hearing Freedom play that concerto. And I so reveled in the music! It comes on every night between 8:00 and 10:00, that lovely two hours, by the Gas Company; they sponsor it. And here, night after night, if I am home, I turn it on; and I imagined he was doing it. I didn’t wait until the person announced who did it. I cut it off before I would be disillusioned in the one playing it. I “heard” Freedom; I imagined that he was doing it. I held him – felt his shoulders, and embraced him and thanked him for the joy I received from the concerto he played.
The next morning at 4:30 his piano is delivered. When he called me the next day to tell me – he has promised to write me, “but he is not given to writing; he promised to give me all the details. I know what he is going to do; he is going to wait until he comes down, and then he is going to tell me in the flesh, because he is not given to putting anything down on paper.
However, this is the simple, simple technique of getting things done in this world. It’s based upon the simple Principle that God exists in us and – [end of recording].
Let us go into the silence.