Neville Goddard (May 08, 1970)
Tonight’s subject is: “He is Dreaming Now.” The Bible begins, as far as man is concerned: “And the Lord God caused a great deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept. And then the Lord God formed woman out of man, and then he told man that he must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one” − one body, one spirit, just one. That is the beginning of our story.
In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice Through The Looking Glass, all these great writers take the same theme; all the great poets, they do it. And here we find this one little…well, a little dialogue: “Come and look at him,” the brothers cried. And they each took one hand of Alice and led her up to where the King was sleeping. “He is dreaming now,” said Tweedle Dee. “And what do you think he is dreaming about?” Alice said: “No one can guess that.” “Why, about you!” said Tweedle Dee, triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?”
Where would you be when you are the creation of the King who is dreaming, if he dared to leave off dreaming about you until he completed his purpose? For the Lord God has sworn: “As I have planned so shall it be and as I have purposed so shall it stand.” “And My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of My mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”
What is his purpose? “He has made known unto us the mystery of His Will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” So what is this plan; what is this purpose? His plan − He is so in love with His creation that exists only for Him and not for itself; like an author − the play and all the characters they exist only for the author. They have no existence outside of the author. But He so loves His creation, He wants the creation to exist for itself. And there is only one way that it can exist for itself, for now it only is an animated body, the whole vast creation and He desires that it cease to be the poem existing only for Himself, but to exist for itself. And there is only one day and one way that He can do it. He can do it only by dying and becoming His poem. Only as He dies and becomes you, will you live for yourself. “So unless I die,” said He, “thou canst not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me.” So God dies − actually dies, and becomes His poem; He becomes you. And now you must dream the dream of death as he dreams it.
The poets speak of it as “the dream of life.” I rather go with Blake and say: “My Emanation yet my Wife till the sleep of Death is over.” Shelley calls it “the dream of life”
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
But I will go with Blake. They are all great, but this is the dream of death where everything comes into being. It appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. When the dream is over, man, individually, will awake. And when he awakes he is the dreamer that is God the creator.
Now, think of Alice and put yourself in the place of Alice −Alice Through The Looking Glass, the most fantastic play. And you are Alice, and he is telling you what he is going to do. Well, you weep because he is going to die that you may live. You don’t want that sacrifice, but he tells you: “Unless I die thou canst not live,” then he makes you a promise: “But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” He makes that promise. Well, how would Alice know that this gift of God to herself, the great King who is dreaming, is complete? He tells Alice that He has a son, a glorious son, a youth just like Alice. He’s not more than a teenager − twelve, thirteen, very fair, beautiful eyes, and beyond the measure of beauty. That’s his son.
Then He tells Alice that you are going to have a son. And Alice tells him: “But how can this be, seeing I know not a man? I know no man.” Then he tells her: “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and the son to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. His name will be David,” he tells Alice, “it will be David.” And now we’ll continue the dream. And so he continues the dream with Alice, sharing with Alice all the horrors of the world. He puts her through all the furnaces, because he has to if she is going to bear his name. “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction, for my own sake, for my own sake I do it. For how should my name be profaned, my glory I will not give to another.” So he takes Alice through all the horrors of the world and then in the end, instead of thinking of Alice, He thinks from Alice.
I can think of you forever and forever and you are but shadows within my mind, flat surfaces depicting that which I would like you to be. But you are not that which I would like you to be until I die and live in you and turn you into a reality. How different the cubic reality is from the “dimension,” that is, the flat surface that depicts it. So Alice is simply within the imagination of the divine Imagination: only a flat surface, moving because He observes her. He animates her by being aware of her. But He so loves her, he will not let her go. He leaves everything and cleaves to Alice until he enters Alice and dwells within her and thinks from Alice, instead of thinking of Alice.
And then one day He awakes within Alice and Alice discovers she is the King that was dreaming. And then He brings confirmation of his gift and His promise to her. One day there is an explosion within Alice, and Alice sees standing before her this youth that He described, which was a boy − a handsome boy with beautiful eyes, ruddy, and fair of skin, and he stands before Alice and calls Alice: “My Father.” And Alice doesn’t feel strange about it, although she’s Alice, a girl, she doesn’t feel strange that she is the parent of this wonderful son, who is the King’s son. And the King had told her in the beginning: “That’s how I will prove to you that I will die and rise in you. I will give you myself and the only way I could ever give you myself is to give you my most precious possession; and my most priceless possession is my son David.”
One day, when I take you through all the trials of the world and prepare you to receive me, prepare you to receive my glory (“For I cannot give it to another.”) I have to bring you into a state where I can give you myself. And so one day He gives Alice himself, and then the son appears and calls Alice, “My Father.” And then − and only then − does Alice know that she is the King who was dreaming, and He was dreaming of Alice. And had He broken that “spell” before He completed his purpose, there would be no more Alice. It would have vanished as though it never were. But He swore in the beginning: “And the Lord God swore” that he would not break it until he had completed his purpose. So “The will of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind.” “In the latter days You will understand it perfectly.” “For as I have sworn, so shall it be. And as I have purposed so shall it stand.”
I am only quoting Scripture. If you have a good concordance, you will find every quote that I’ve made tonight is from Scripture. Those who do not have it − my last is from Isaiah, the 14th chapter: “As I have sworn so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” “My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” That is from Jeremiah the 23rd [chapter]. All these are simply quotations. We are told: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.” Well, search the poets, too, for they are men of vision and they have made every effort to tell in their own wonderful way. For, as Tennyson said: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you take your vision and make every effort, based upon your talent, to put it into the form of a story that man, accepting the story, will find it moving story, into his own being, it becomes a man.
So here the story of the King who is dreaming and he is dreaming the most glorious play in the world, yet it’s a horrible play. Listen to the radio tonight or the TV tonight or tomorrow morning’s paper, and see the horrors all over the world. Brother against brother − the whole thing is in conflict, and yet it is serving a divine purpose. Don’t you lose the vision; don’t get lost in the play. You remain faithful to the Promise: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me. Wouldst Thou not One that would never die for Thee or ever die for One who had not died for Thee. And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not Himself Eternally for Man, Man could not Exist.”
So God died. And God’s death is simply to cease thinking of you and to think from you, to occupy you − just as you occupy a house and think from it, if it is your home. So within you now God dwells. He died for you. His name is “I AM.” That’s His name forever and forever. He has no other name, just “I AM.” He is your redeemer, turning you from a moving animated body into a life giving spirit.
One day back in ‘54 I heard these words. Now, you will find it difficult to grasp it, but they have stayed with me since the vision. The vision was audio. And here a voice is speaking: “You do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep. It is all a movement of mind. The intensity is determined by the strength of the vortex you create. It is just like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness. You only believe that you move when you wake, as you think you move in sleep.”
Where is God moving, save in Imagination? Where on earth is he moving where he is? He’s all places; there is no place where God is not. So where is He moving? It’s only a movement in mind. And the whole vast world moves because God moves within Himself. We are but animated bodies and He doesn’t want the poem to exist only for him; He wants the poem to exist for itself. So here he dwells now in man and man thinks he is moving. I came here tonight in my friends’ car. I trust we’ll go back tonight, and I will think: “Well, I moved. I moved from my home to here; I moved from here to my home,” and yet the voice that never has deceived me tells me I do not move in waking any more than I move on my bed in sleep.
It’s all a movement of mind. Then he tells me it’s like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness, and the intensity is determined by the vortex that I create; that I only believe that I move when I wake, as I think I move when I sleep. Well, I know I do not move during the night, save just move from one side to the other in bed. Wednesday morning, as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most delightful time, and here the whole thing was as clear as crystal. I met my wife in 1936. I fell in love with her the very moment I saw [her.] She didn’t with me, but she didn’t know that she was going to be my wife. I knew it that very moment, I just knew it. I said: “You don’t know it but you’re going to be my wife.”
And I had no social, intellectual, financial, or any other background that you would turn and say: “All right, so he has this…none of those things.” But I still knew she was going to be my wife. But I tell you, I had…she was going to be my wife.
So Wednesday morning as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most marvelous game with myself. My daughter was born in 1942; I met her mother in 1936; here now it is up to date: it is 1970. This is the time of the vision and here is my daughter. She is what her age is now: she almost will be twenty-eight. She knows that I am in love with this young lady who is twenty-nine. She heartily disapproves. I tell her: “That’s your mother.” She doesn’t know her mother, when her mother was twenty-nine. And I knew all these were states.
You ask me why we go through hell in this world. To acquire a keyboard on which we will play tomorrow. Today it seems like a chromatic scale, one note after the other leading up to a huge keyboard. Tomorrow you will take two events widely separated in time and slide them together, and they will sound differently from the individual note when you encountered it, the individual experience. Then you will be able to move your mind into a larger focus and split it, as you would your fingers on a piano and hit − not two events widely separated in time, but hit five, hit ten. And you will take this fabulous keyboard of 6,000 years, acquiring notes, and you will play the most fantastic creation in the world.
So, here I took my daughter and I was having fun with her, and I am having the most glorious romance with her mother which she didn’t know (the romance with her mother that was twenty-nine). I was excited as I was when I was young and in love with her when she was twenty-nine. My daughter, at twenty-seven, knows nothing of that mother, and she denies it. I say: “She’s your mother,” and she doesn’t know that at all. She says: “Nope, entirely different. That came years later.” And then I took the ships, I went to sea, and did all these things that I took my wife so often across the Caribbean on ships. We have flown several times, but many a time we took the ships. And all these things − and I’m playing them all together, having the most fantastic thing, knowing that each one was a state in itself and not related to anything unless I chose to relate it.
I could take all these states, and I played the most creative part, I was creating the most wonderful drama using only the experiences from the day I met my wife in 1936 up to the present moment. And I was playing the most fantastic thing, bringing in all kinds of suspicions from my daughter, and her father falling in love with this young girl. And I was enjoying every moment of it. She didn’t know it; she was only a state in my world. And my wife, through all these years that she’s been my wife, she’s only a state, individual states, one after the other. That every moment of my life I am acquiring a new note on this fabulous keyboard, on which I will play tomorrow when I completely leave this garment. And life within me I will animate the entire thing. And will I then create out of that fabulous thing an Alice, that I will so fall in love with something coming out of that fabulous keyboard that I too, will do for Alice what He did for me?
I will say then to that that comes out of my creative power: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me, Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And unless God dies for Man and gives himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” So God dies. So you and I are creating now − or rather we are gathering together through our horrible and lovely experiences, for “joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.”
So we are gathering together a fabulous keyboard on which we will play tomorrow and produce that perfect one with whom we will fall in love, as told you in the very beginning of Genesis. And out of Him came Eve, and then he had to leave everything − his father, his mother, everything, and cleave to his wife until they became one. So you will create your wife out of what you will play from the keyboard that you are now acquiring. And you will bring forth your Eve, too; and you will so fall in love with that, that you do not wish her to exist only for you within that poem. You want her to exist for herself, and there is no way you can make her exist for herself unless you give yourself to her. So you die. You give up everything that you are − your creative power and your wisdom − and take the weakness and the limitations of the one that you brought forth out of your own being: “My emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is past.”
Then you will understand what all these poets have been trying over and over again to tell us. Take the one of Emily Bronte. You’ve seen the picture and maybe you’ve read the book, Wuthering Heights. (The first time I saw Olivier was in that picture.) There’s a character in it called Cathy. “I have dreamed in my life,” says Cathy, “dreams that have stayed with me ever after and changed my ideas. They have gone through and through me like wine through water and altered the color of my mind.” These are the very words of Emily Bronte. She wrote it. There was no Cathy, save in her Imagination − it was all in Emily Bronte. I can say with Bronte, the same thing happened to me. So how could I ever be what I was, after the vision, when the vision is more real than you are here now? Far more real, more alive. So, from vision to vision I have been compelled to change what formerly I believed. I could no longer accept the theories of men. They all sit down and write their theories. Karl Marx writes his theory. It’s a little theory. It shakes the world, yes, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. And so another one writes another theory and another theory and so you have all kinds of theories in the world. But then my visions completely turn them completely over. Hasn’t a thing to do with vision, with the reality of life. Hasn’t a thing to do with it, even though they seem to shake the entire world.
So, let them shake the world. You remain faithful to the vision. If they haven’t come, they’ll come. They come at the end of time. “In the end you will understand it clearly.” In the end. In the beginning it seemed you must go here and go there and go elsewhere to acquire all kinds of knowledge. Eat it as much as you want, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in the end you will eat from the Tree of Life. And you will know what it really is; it’s all within us. God became as I am that I may be as he is. Because he fell in love with his creation, I was part of his poem that existed only for God. And he so loved me, the character in his poem, that he wanted to give me independence and freedom. I only existed with him as an animated body to move and do as he willed, and independence means that I can do as I will. To do that, he had to give me himself, because He has life in Himself.
Now, he wants to give his son life in himself. To do that he had to give me himself and he is a father; and being the father he has to now give me his son, and it isn’t Neville. He has an eternal son that he shares with the characters of his poem, making all the characters himself. For he is a protean being playing all the parts. And so, having given me himself, and he is a father, he must now give me his son, and his son stands before me and calls me “father,” and then I know that I am the King who was dreaming.
”So come and let us go and look at him,” said the brothers. “Oh, he is dreaming now and I wonder what he is dreaming about.” “But no one could know that.” “Why, about you,” said Tweedle Dee. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you think you would be?” But he will not leave off dreaming about you until his will has been accomplished. “For I will not turn back until I have executed an accomplished the intents of my mind.” Read it carefully, in the greatest book in the world, the Bible.
Let all the others speculate and carry on with all their nonsense. Today’s great theory that may even prove itself in performance will be disproved tomorrow by some modification of that theory. Even though it proves itself, it’ll be modified tomorrow. You can’t modify the vision of God. It is forever; you’ll never modify it. You don’t need a son called “David plus” or “David minus”; he is David, and there is no other son! You aren’t going to find him called by any other name. There is no other way to the awakening as God the Father, no other way. For there is only one way and no other way. So let them all speculate and let them run around trying to find another way to the Father. Someone comes to town with a huge balloon of advertising and they all rush to hear what he has to say, and they get nothing but nonsense and an empty pocketbook. And then they come back and wonder: “Why hasn’t it happened to me?” And you remain silent, for you know exactly what they’ve been doing. They have been running around from post to post and wonder “why it hasn’t happened to me.” That’s all over the Scriptures.
So I tell you: he is dreaming now and he’s dreaming about you. And he will not break the dream. No one can arouse him until he completes his intention. His intention is to give himself to you, as though there were no other in the world − just you and God, and eventually only you, for you will be God. There is nothing in the world but that.
Then having acquired this fabulous keyboard of experiences − oh, will you play! You’ll play it beautifully and bring forth one that so captures you that you want to give your emanation her own life, to make your emanation exist within herself and not just for you, as the poem exists for the poet. And you, too, will lay your life down in her and cleave to her until you become one.
Now, you dwell upon it, and let no one divert you. Oh, they can give you a thousand and one arguments. It makes no difference. After you have had a vision you are led by the vision, and you remain faithful to the vision. It would make no difference at all to you, although the world convolves as it is today, carrying signs this way and signs that way. And all brother against brother, as you’ve seen in the papers − don’t think for one moment it’s all in one direction. The country’s completely divided. The vocal minority seems to be the majority. It’s not the majority. On Wall Street today, a bunch of workers, construction workers with their helmets on, and they are protesting − not any war in Vietnam − protesting their pay. They want a raise in pay because of inflation. And then groups of these war protesters came by on Wall Street, and these fellows with their helmets − these strong, strapping men − became so incensed they jumped upon these fellows and beat them unmercifully, then unfurled the American flag − eight or ten flags, and with signs saying: “Impeach the Mayor, Lindsey,” − and walked with their American flags towards city hall. So they are not all protesting in one direction.
There are unnumbered ideas in the world, and men live by their ideas. Let no one think by tomorrow morning’s paper…depending on the cut of the paper, how they’re going to cut the news, for they all do it. They cut it based upon what the policy of the editorial setup is at the moment. But they do not know the world’s picture.
But you forget all of that nonsense, and you go about on this vision. God actually became you that you may become God. You dwell upon that and let the whole thing go past you. That is the story of Scripture. It’s the story of every great imaginative writer in the world and all the truly great poets. They took the same theme from Scripture based upon their vision, and they tried to the best of their abilities to tell it, knowing as Tennyson knew, that: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”
So you can tell it, and the lowly door will accept it in a most literal form, and they will live by it; it will simply cushion all blows. And eventually that truth will erupt in its true form within them, and they will see the truth of what was intended in the story.
So you are the Alice of Alice Through The Looking Glass, and you were taken to see the King, and he was sound asleep dreaming, and you thought that no one knew what he was dreaming about. But one of the angels did. He’s called Tweedle Dee − a nut. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and the Mad Hatter − they’re all nuts. Well, those in the angelic world would appear nuts to the rational mind in this world. For the rational mind is going to live longer, and the only one who gets richer by the advice given by one who’s talking about living longer, is the one who talks about it.
So you buy something because of highly publicized TV promotions. Someone highly publicized a little − what is called “Liquid Plumber.” And so I had some moment in my bathroom where the sink was all stopped up, so I got the Liquid Plumber. Poured it in, in abundance. It said it’s heavier than water, and it would go all the way down and just eat up everything that is organic and will not hurt anything that is not organic, so I poured it in. Water still remained; it didn’t go down. Called the plumber the next day. He couldn’t come that day but he would come the next day. So it was forty-eight hours. So when he came the entire sink was eaten away by the Liquid Plumber. So I asked him: “Does this thing work?” He said: “It does for two people: the one who manufactures it, and the one who sells it.” [Laughter from the audience.] They are the only ones who profit by the Liquid Plumber. And so you turned on the TV and you saw it and you bought it. It is still on TV and I am sinning, because to sin by silence, when I should protest, makes cowards of us all. But I haven’t protested to the station that advertises this nonsense and I haven’t protested to the one, the place where I got it or to any one who manufactures it, so I am the silent sinner. Multiply me because of my embarrassment. Here is a sink completely eaten up by Liquid Plumber.
So that is the world in which we live. And so that same thing goes for selling any other product. And that product could be how to get rich. A man, a friend of mine, died two years ago. I went to his funeral. He left behind an unsold volume, but he sold many of them, How To Live Forever. (That was the title of his book.) Well, he knew that it couldn’t catch up with him, because whenever he died, no one could question him. Perfectly all right. Another one tells you how to become a millionaire overnight and so he will sell it to the gullible. So he makes his little money and he still leaves the book. And he goes from one little place to another, selling his little nonsense. That’s the world over.
You go back to the book of books that will not change − it’s the Bible. It’s not history, it’s not secular history. This is revelation from beginning to end. Hasn’t a thing to do with secular history. All these characters are eternal states of consciousness, and you will meet them. And when you enter into that state, they become animated because of your entrance. You are the animating power of everything in the world. Now you are acquiring a keyboard. And you think of that chromatic scale, and suppose you could only play it in one direction, and would not miss one measure? It’s all you can do. And then one day you discover you don’t have to go on this way forever − you can jump. Or you can go back in time, and your fingers can split and you can hit two notes together. Sounds like the devil but you learn to still hit another one that sounds harmonious. And one day you become so proficient that you hit a note and though it’s a discord, you learn how to resolve it. You can produce it and bring it into a dissonance. And you become the most expert on this keyboard.
Well now, think of life, 6,000 years of experiences building a keyboard, and each note is simply an experience in life. And you take all these experiences and you are the artist now, and what you bring out, out of that fabulous keyboard…And then you bring it out and you want it to exist for itself and not only for you. So, instead of playing on it forever and having all these things come out, these glorious things existing only for you and not for themselves, you do the same thing that God did for you. “So unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me.” And you give yourself to your own creation that it may exist for itself and not only for you.
Now let us go into the silence.
Questions & Answers
Are there any questions please?
Q: After one is awakened and he has left the garment on earth and he returns home, what is he doing, what does he do?
A: What does he do? He creates, my dear, and contemplates this world of death. As Blake said it so beautifully: “Those in Great Eternity Who contemplate on Death said thus: What seems to be is to Those to Whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequents to Those to Whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair and Eternal Death, but Divine Mercy steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body Of Jesus.” They are part of the Brotherhood, the redeemed body, and contemplate this world, letting it be to those who want it to be.
Tonight, a man who has a billion dollars − oh, he can’t think for one moment…he wouldn’t for one moment think of death. He doesn’t want to die; he wants to live here forever. Though the body gets older and older and weaker and weaker, he wants to live here forever with his billion dollars. He knows he has to leave it behind him, and he’s breaking his brains not to, and wondering how to protect it in the right channel. And he builds himself portraits of himself, always glamorous portraits. Compare the original to the portrait − well you’d faint if you thought these two are the same. But he has to have that for posterity. He builds himself, like Stalin. Stalin had thousands and thousands, and Hitler had thousands and thousands of statues of themselves. They renamed the rivers, they renamed the cities. Stalingrad − now it’s Volgograd. He wasn’t yet cold when they renamed it for him. And all the rivers are renamed, and the fellows put the little things around their heads and broke the statues and smashed them. He never thought that would ever happen.
A little fellow here in Santo Domingo, he did the same thing, too: Trujillo − that little tiny island − statues all over to Trujillo. He only stole about a billion out of the small island, and built up his own little reputation. So they all do it, they all do it. And people are still carried away with these stupid little leaders, and pick themselves up and like sheep they will follow anything. You know, if you took a sheep as the leader, at sea, and took the leader and threw the leader overboard, all the sheep would follow and jump overboard. That’s a fact; that is a fact. Take the leader of the sheep, the belled one, throw him overboard, all the sheep will run and jump overboard. That’s what man does. They’re just like sheep. But they don’t know it.
Stop being the sheep and stop following and following just because it’s a popular thing to do, and begin to simply dwell upon the eternal story and hope it will take place in you.
Any other questions please?
Q: You use that keyboard analogy. [Is that] what we’re doing while we’re here?
A: Why certainly my dear, every moment in time is a note. It’s an experience and it is caught in eternity. You may not remember the entire day and all the little sequences of the day, but they’re not lost. If you gave your time to it, you’d bring it back. There is a little practice of getting into bed and thinking of the day in reverse order. It’s a very good way to go to sleep, may I tell you, because the mind tires so quickly if you take it in reverse. And by the time you get to where you started to undress, if you take all the details, you are sound asleep. Man thinks he can go all through the day. He goes through by jumping from cleaning his teeth to dinner. There is quite an interval between dinner and cleaning your teeth. If you took all the little details − and they’re all individual notes on the keyboard − before you go just a matter of moments, the mind tires and off to bed you go, off to sleep. In the morning when we get up, we jump up, wash our face, and get ready for the day − and how many record the individual incidents of the day?