23 Oct Neville Goddard Lectures: “You Find Jesus Christ In Yourself As Yourself”
2/11/66
Last Tuesday, we tried to share with you what we have discovered about Jesus Christ. As you know from scripture not everyone finds him who sought him. Many found him because friends brought them and showed them Jesus Christ. The story of Philip, he brought Nathaniel; then Andrew brought Peter. So, many find him. And the one who finds him can’t keep it to himself he must share it. So having found him, I tried last Tuesday to share him with you. And you saw, if you were here, it’s not what the world believes Jesus to be at all…something entirely different…the creative power and wisdom of God (1Cor.1:24). Personified yes, but you are a person and you’ll find him in yourself as yourself.
The story of Jesus is an acted parable, an incredible prophecy of what one day will really be the experience of the believer. Everyone will experience the story of Jesus Christ; then you will know from experience who Jesus Christ really is. We are looking for the Father. The world believes that Jesus Christ is the Son. I tell you, Jesus Christ is God the Father. The whole vast world is looking for the Father. We are told in Peter’s first epistle, “If we say our Father to the one who judges every man impartially on the record of his deeds, then we must stand in awe before him while we live out the time of our exile” (1Pet.1:17). We’re all exiled, not because we have done anything that is wrong. This is a grand play. It is God who exiled himself. It is God in man who animates man. It is that God that you and I are seeking.
This is the tale as told in scripture. As the poet said, “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So we hear the story, and on this journey of ours, exiled as we are, some of us are too busy to stop to listen, some hear it eagerly and then forget it, others hear and it haunts them. They become hungry only for it, and then it steals in at lowly doors. This story…as Paul in his letter to the Galatians, he said, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you ending with the flesh?” (Gal.3:1). That phrase “hearing with faith” in certain translations they take it and they translate it in this manner: “or hearing the story of faith, hearing the gospel? Did you receive the Spirit in any other way?” You heard it, and you stopped long enough to listen, and it interested you, and you went your way. As you walked your way suddenly within you the story unfolds.
To participate in “the age to come” depends upon God’s mighty act of raising the dead, called in scripture the resurrection. It begins there. So while you and I are walking this earth, not at the end of the journey where men call us dead, but within our own personal history it happens. Then the entire story unfolds within us and we go out to tell it. Only a man who has experienced scripture can really understand how perfectly wonderful it really is. Here is this most fantastic prophecy as we are told in Revelation, “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (19:10). Listen to the testimony. From whom? Well, then read it. If no one has actually experienced it, read it. And as you read it, believe it. It’s all about you.
One day you will know who he is. Why do I say he’s the Father? As I search scripture, I find him revealing himself as Father. Go back to the first revelation of the Father. In the 16th chapter of 1st Samuel, here he is discussing with a youth, the youth is called David. Here is David’s father Jesse (verse 21). He’s talking to both; he knows both, the two. He asks the father of David to let David be his armor bearer…so here he knows him. Yet in the next chapter the promise is made that any man who destroys the enemy of Israel, his father will be set free…the freeing of the Father (1Sam.17:25). Well, here comes the lad, the lad’s name is David, and the king is made to act as though he doesn’t know him (verse 55). He turns to his lieutenant Abner, he said, “Abner, whose son is that youth?” If I saw the most marvelous person before me and I asked the question, “Whose son is he?” my interest is not in the lad, my interest is in his father. “Whose son is he?” Abner replied, “As your soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.” He said, “Enquire whose son the stripling is.” No one knows. Then comes David standing before him with the head of the Philistine Goliath, he said, “Whose son are you, young man?” He said, “I am the son of Jesse, your servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite” and the story ends.
The word translated “youth, stripling, young man” is the Hebrew word Olam. The Bible translates it “eternity, the world.” In every great city in our land there is a cemetery called Beth Olam. We have one here. Man’s eternal home…misinterpreted as something that is final, and there is no return. The word Olam means “eternity” yet it also means “youth, young man, stripling. It’s the word used in the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes, “And God has put Olam…”—it’s translated in one Bible as “the world,” in another as “eternity.” “God has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (verse 11).
What did he put into the mind of man? When he puts eternity, he puts himself— throughout scripture we speak of the eternal God, El Olam, the Eternal One—into the mind of man. And he is the Father. I am waiting and looking for this Father. I put it into the mind of man in the beginning of time, and start man on his journey. But if God the Father is in man, who is exiled? The word we translate God or the Lord, Yod He Vav He, the verb He Vav He, had the original meaning of “to fall or the one who causes to fall; to blow or the one who causes the wind to blow.” So the fall was not a mistake. It was a deliberate contraction of infinity to this limit called man. So in the mind of man is God—it’s I AM. And he doesn’t know it until the very end. And he’s on his search, standing in awe in the presence of him while you live the time of your exile.
So I’m calling him “Father” as though he were there. I speak of him as the one all out there. Wait ‘til the end of the exile when you’re just about to return. At that moment, you’ll know what he put into the mind…he put himself right into the mind of man. That self is I AM. And no power in the world can persuade you that that is God but the Son of God. Was it Jesus Christ? No, it wasn’t Jesus Christ who revealed God to me; it was God’s only begotten son, as told in the 2nd Psalm: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (verse 7). It’s said to the same youth, this eternal youth; for if the Father is eternal and the Son is like the Father, the Son is eternal. It’s said to David.
I can’t explain to anyone here the emotion that possesses you…when you were taught to believe that this character is some historical character that lived a thousand B.C., and here is 1966 and that we are related, that I came before him? For the father must precede the son. Here he stands before you and not a word need be said, yet it is said, he calls you “Father.” You know it. Here is this beautiful eternal youth who is calling you “Father,” and only then do you know who the Father really is. Only then you know yourself as the Father. Well, who in scripture is the Father? He said God. “And the Lord said unto me, ‘Thou art my son; today I have begotten thee.” You can’t be a father unless there’s a son. So in the Book of John, “No one has seen the Father; but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18). It takes the Son to reveal the Father. And the Son comes out of nowhere, but he comes out of your Imagination. You actually feel this explosion, right out of your head, and when it all settles, here is this that you can’t describe in words, this beauty beyond measure, beyond description, stands before you and calls you “Father.”
Now remember this is a story and you’ve got to take liberties in telling a story, so you take the Father and personify it. Because you are a person, so you’ve got to personify it. So it becomes a Jesus Christ. It has to be personified. But we can’t separate God’s eternal power, creative power, from God himself. Well, I’m going to ask you to test it. In scripture when you’re asked to test, who do you test? Listen to the words, “Come test yourself and see. Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in thee?” (2Cor.13:5). It didn’t ask you to test Jesus Christ, test yourself to see if he’s not in you. Well, how do I go about testing? Is he what? Where is he? He’s in me. I just discovered he’s the Father. If I ask anything of the Father, he’ll do it. Whatever you ask the Father he’ll do.
Well, how do I ask the Father? Last Tuesday, we showed you, and last Friday in discussing little Lynn’s story. We asked you to try it. I tell you, it works miracles, cannot fail! For if he’s in me, I don’t have to go any place. I must find out how do I reach him, even though he’s within me. What is the core of man? If this very moment, suddenly I don’t know who I am, where I am, what I am, I can’t stop knowing that I am. So I start there…that’s the core of man…I am. So I commune now with myself…and anything in this world…just commune with myself as though there were two. I can then say, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). We are one, yet I speak of me and my Father. So I now take it like some wonderful exercise and commune with myself, and then I reach an agreement with myself as though it were done, and thank self. But it’s thanking another; it makes it easier on this level. If I thank myself, it doesn’t carry the same conviction. If I can just actually commune with self as though there were two, and have absolute confidence in the seeming other, and just say, “Thank you, Father”…yet I am the Father. But the Father is on this higher level that sees all, knows all, and can instantly rearrange the entire pattern to objectify that which I asked of myself. And may I tell you, when it comes into our world it comes so easily that you and I will say, “Oh, it would have happened anyway.”
So I ask you to try it. If it’s money, try it for money. If it’s for a home, marriage, I don’t care what it is, try it! I’m not going to tell you these things will bring satisfaction, will bring happiness. It hasn’t a thing to do…you could have a million, millions, doesn’t mean it’s going to bring happiness. Night before last, I turned on TV to get the news, and here came Burns, George Burns. He was an intimate of Billy Rose and Sophie Tucker, so he told just a few little stories of the two. Well, he turned to Billy Rose, born in the slums of New York, in the east, raised in poverty, had nothing, very short in stature, he was five foot three, took up shorthand, became an expert and worked for the great financier, Baruch, Bernie Baruch. Then he became a showman. He put on the Aquacade at the World’s Fair in ’39. In ’39 he made his first million. Well, as the years went by he married and remarried, didn’t bring him happiness, married five times. One night at dinner, living in this palatial place of his, he said to his wife—which one of the five I don’t know—he said, “The most wonderful thing happened to me today!” This is a story told by Billy Rose to George Burns. Well, she didn’t seem to be interested, but she listened. He said, “I made one million dollars today!”
He meant it…if you hold what he held in stock and they split. He was the largest single stockholder of A.T. &T. He left 190,000 shares of A.T. &T. Well, if you have any section of that and it splits, you run into millions. On this day he made a million. And he said to Burns, “You know what she said? ‘Pass the salt.’” She wanted that salt more than she wanted the millions. So he left an estate of $25 million, he left it as all must do. That’s why I told you last Tuesday when the lady asked the question, “Why emphasize the promise?” because without the promise all the success of earth is as nothing. If I didn’t have the Promise to support me, that in the end regardless of what I’ve done with my life, that I will be one with God. That’s the Promise: For “I will raise up after you a son that shall come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam.7:12)…and yet we are one. He is simply bringing forth himself out of man. And so, without that Promise what would it matter? He is gone tonight, and I hope that those who loved him get the twenty-five million. I know the one person who will get the most of it and that is Uncle Sam. He’ll get millions. But there are still millions left for those he will remember in his will. But a generation from now only those to whom he left the money will even know a man called Billy Rose ever existed. No one will know. Well, that’s only a mask that God wore while a thing called Billy Rose walked the earth for sixty-six years.
So here, have it if you want it. You can have all the money you want if you really believe in God. God is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s God. So when you sit here, don’t look outside. All that you are imagining, that’s God in action. But man doesn’t believe in the reality of these unseen imaginal acts. If he could only believe in the reality of the unseen imaginal act knowing that it is God in action, nothing would be impossible to that man, but nothing. We’re not called upon to devise the means to bring it to pass; all you’re asked to do is simply to believe. Having imagined it, just believe. You don’t work out anything. He said, “I have ways and means”—speaking now to the mask—“that you know not of. My ways are past finding out” (Rom. 11:33 KJV). And it’s not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. So, can I actually believe it? I say, “Father,” nothing wrong with that. And the one I now address “our Father” or “my Father” when I stand in his presence I stand in awe as it were. It’s a lovely communion, a wonderful feeling between the seeming two who are really one. And you feel it so lightly. No palaver, no special hour, no special holy place to go, just where you are. If tonight you go to a bar from here, that’s holy if you’re there. Wherever a man is, that’s holy, for God occupies man. He actually lost himself in man, he’s buried in man. By man I mean generic man—male, female. So in everyone there is God and that is the great mystery. Man searches for him all through space, all through time. And he was nearer than breathing all along: He was his own wonderful human Imagination.
So we have but two weeks left. I do hope you won’t forget. I do hope you’ll put yourself to the test, and whenever I do return you’ll be able to tell me unnumbered wonderful stories of the wise use of this law. My hope for you is that when I do return you will have had the Promise, that’s my wish. But for yourself, although that may be your wish too, I do hope you’ll apply it towards beautifying your world and getting wonderful things by the use of the law. It’s a simple law. As we’re told, “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord. For in all that he does he prospers” (Ps. 1:1-3).
So if you’re here for the first time tonight, just let me now address you personally as though you never heard it before. It doesn’t matter what you’ve ever done—you might have been cruel, you might have been a thief, you might be this very night running away from some deed—I will say you are forgiven. Believe now in God: God is your own wonderful human Imagination and with him all things are possible. So regardless of what your background might have been, regardless of what you’re doing now, have an object, have a desire, a consuming desire. Believe in the infinite wisdom and power of a presence that is in you, and believe that presence to be your Imagination. Don’t argue the point. You carry the request to this one within you as though you say, “Is it all right?” He will invariably say, “Yes, it is done!” Invariably! He doesn’t argue, he doesn’t point to your background, he doesn’t point to any restrictions of the past. He played those parts. So whatever you want, go to him, commune with him; bring it to a head as though it were done. Is it done? And get confirmation from this deeper self, “Yes, it’s done.” And then drop it. Your conscious reasoning mind cannot reach the depth necessary to set in motion all the causes necessary to bring it to pass in this world.
So don’t try to analyze it. Leave it just where it is. It will happen in a way you would never suspect. I could tell you unnumbered stories to support this simple, simple tale. But if you labor the point and you think you must know this party, must know that party, you must do this, that and the other, well, then you don’t trust God. On this level you can do nothing but ask, believing that you have received, and you will receive. As told us in the Book of Mark, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it and you will” (11:24). “Whatever” includes everything. You just ask. I give you a little warning: Always ask in love, always. Whenever you ask for another, make sure it is something that you wouldn’t mind receiving for yourself. If I’m quite willing to accept it for myself, you can ask it for another. If it is something I wouldn’t want, it’s distasteful, don’t ask it for another.
Now I tell you, the day is coming that you and I will know—this is no little belief on the outside—we will know that we aren’t two; there is only God. He only has one Son, one name; for in that day, one Lord, one name and one Son. And if my son is your son, then you and I are the same father. I know from experience that everyone in the world will have the same experience of seeing God’s only begotten Son call him “Father.” Then in the depth of our soul we will understand the unity: He who becomes one becomes united with the Lord, becomes one Spirit with him.
So let me encourage you, the resurrection is taking place. It’s not an event that took place once and for all; it’s taking place. The one event that took place once and for all is over, and that is the crucifixion. And may I tell you, it’s not as the churches of the world paint it. The emotion of the crucifixion is sheer ecstasy. You can’t describe the glory, the thrill, the ecstasy of the crucifixion. No blood, no tears, no pain; sheer ecstasy when you are nailed to this garment. These are vortices, these two palms of the hand, and so are the soles of the feet, and so is the side, and so it the head. When you relive the experience, if the memory of it brings back such joy, what do you think the original was! So, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). So look at the tenses: We have been united in a death like his, we shall be united in a resurrection like his. So these are two tenses; one is over, one is coming.
Now listen to these words: If you were here, he would not have died. “I am the resurrection. Do you believe that, Martha? Yes Lord. I believe that you are the one who is coming into the world.” Read that in the 11th of John (verse 25). You are coming into the world. If you are the resurrection and I am not yet resurrected that I may enter the new age, then I have hope. You are coming into the world; you came in the crucifixion. In the beginning was the crucifixion…it starts that way…but the new age begins with the resurrection. Entirely different!
So I say to everyone, you will be. And the resurrection is so unlike what the churches teach. Because the whole drama takes place here, the resurrection begins here [pointing to head]. It’s not out there at all. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your” own wonderful “human Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jer., Plt. 71). You do it all here. If I rearrange the structure of my mind and persuade myself of the reality of this rearrangement, and the outer world then molds itself in harmony with this rearranged structure, where is the cause? If I examine the outside, I might think this one did that, that one did that, and that’s why it is as it appears to be. But if I have a memory, I go back to how it started. It all started by my rearranged structure of the mind. I, by changing the inner aspects of my own mind, brought about changes in the outer to conform to the inner changes. So if it always works that way, where is the cause? Is it anything on the outside at all? It isn’t!
So I say to every one of you, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ve been, no matter what you are doing, believe this story and you’ll be completely transformed. No desire to hurt anyone, because there is no other. There is no other; there’s only God, and you are he. God became man that man may become God. So don’t postpone your good, and wait for something to change on the outside in order to make it easier, don’t. Start it now, right here before you leave the room. When you go home tonight do it again. Do it when you go to bed…a little communion with self. For you who were not here, we took the 4th Psalm, the 4th verse, and the words are simple, “Be angry.” The day didn’t go as you wanted it to go, “Be angry, but sin not.” Sinning is “missing the mark.” Don’t let your anger go with you into the deep of sleep. Stop, be angry, get it off your chest. At that moment having blown your top as it were, now don’t sin. Sinning is missing the mark. So you have an objective, a goal, now commune with your own heart on your bed and be still, be silent.
Now you’re told what to do, “Bring the right sacrifice.” And the word translated “right” in the King James Version is “the sacrifice of righteousness.” Righteousness is right thinking. Forget now having blown my top; and then start the right thinking, and commune, and say what I want…not what I didn’t get today, what I want. Not the opposition to what I wanted, what I want. Then as I commune with self, reach the point of being thankful, “Thank you.” And then we are told, “Trust in the Lord.” Bring the sacrifice of righteousness and trust in the Lord. Just go to bed that way and see how it works. The whole thing works quickly. Don’t postpone it, and don’t try to aid it. It’s all within you, and the rearranged structure here rearranges it there; and it’s only reflection, it’s only response.
So let no one say to you to convince you that because of your background or your limitations of birth you are stuck. No one is stuck save he sticks himself. Billy Rose, there’s no one here tonight who was poorer, no one with more limitations. He was sixty-six. Well, a very dear friend of mine, he was born in the same area, on the east side. There were Italians on one side, Jews on the other, and the Jew had to pass the Italian blocks to go to school. My friend Rosy, who today has millions, then he didn’t have a nickel, he told me himself, he said, “Neville, I would come out of my home and I would start running…talk about a 100-yeard dash…because everything that they had they threw at us. They threw tomatoes, threw everything. And every day of my life it was the same race to get through that two or three hundred yards to get to school.” That’s how he started in New York City. So racial problems are not just between white and black, it was the Italian and the Jew, it was the Protestant and the Catholic, and all these stupid little divisions.
So this man Rose, he started as a Jew in a neighborhood where because he was a Jew and one born by the accident of birth a Christian thought himself better…and didn’t know the first meaning of the word Christian. But that didn’t start sixty years ago; it still is today. Ask all these fellas with all their lovely robes and all their names—now people kiss their hand and think they’re kissing a holy man—ask them to really tell you who Jesus Christ really is. They wouldn’t know. They really believe he’s a man that lived once and for all 2,000 years ago. They don’t know that Jesus Christ is God the Father. They don’t know he’s their own wonderful human Imagination. If you say it, they’re shocked. I’m speaking from experience.
They say, “Where do you get that in the Bible?” And may I tell you, when I turn to the Bible…I didn’t write it, here it is…what other conclusion can you reach when I read this? They want to close the book right away. They never saw it, but they teach in all the great schools. But they never saw it.
What about these words: “Show us the Father. I have been so long with you and you do not know the Father, Philip? He who sees me has seen the Father. How then can you say, Show us the Father?” (John 14:8). I’ve been walking and talking with you and you don’t know the Father? Bear in mind this is a story and it’s a parable. One day it unfolds in man, but it has to be dramatized. As Paul said, as you would on the stage: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal.3:1). I can take any life and dramatize it in picture form, put it on the stage, tell it in the form of a story, and so you simply depict it. Well, here is the story of salvation depicted for man, and man forgot the spirit behind the story, and started worshipping the vehicle that conveyed the story. And so they simply worshipped false gods.
Now here, we are closing two weeks from tonight. Another thing I want to tell you, our friend Freedom will be here a week from Sunday…
* * *
Q: What is the meaning of all the names of generations?
A: Did you hear the question? What’s the meaning of the names of all the generations in the Bible? They are states of consciousness, spiritual states, not men, not women. We speak of the great patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You’ll find them only in the Bible. Yet we have records that go back several centuries before what we call A.D. There is no reference in any book of the name Jesus Christ; you only find it in the Bible. These characters live in man as eternal spiritual states.
Q: I know that the names mean states of mind, but there are a lot of names that, uh, like Abraham and Jacob, those are well known names, but there are others like one was a brother and a cousin…names that at least I don’t know of…
A: Well, my dear, names in the Bible differ from other names in the sense we name a child after some rich uncle in the hope. That’s not how people are named in the Bible, they’re named for their significance. So Abraham, the father of multitudes, so out of him will come all who have faith, for he is the foundation of faith. So, many are the children of Abraham after the flesh, if you want to put it that way, as people claim, but you must be children of Abraham after the spirit which is faith.
Q: Neville, what do you do when you have a friend who works the law against you and he thinks he’s doing you a favor?
A: My dear, you’re giving him a power he does not really possess. Don’t give him the power. If you think you are better than another then you are better. Do not give to another that which belongs to God.
Q: The law of tithing they talk about, is that man made or from God?
A: The law of tithing…the Bible speaks of tithing. Melchizedek received a tithe from Abraham. These are states. Melchizedek has no father, no mother, no ancestors, no beginning, no end. Jesus Christ was called a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. If it has no origin and it is the origin of all, it must be God, would it not? Well then, Abraham tithed. You tithe with God when you sit quietly, commune with yourself, and ask for anything in this world in confidence that it’s granted. And when it’s given to you it’s pressed down, shaken together, and running over. It always comes back more. You only gave ten percent of what comes back.
Q: It doesn’t mean you give ten percent to a church?
A: No. If you want to give to some charity organization and it gives you pleasure, give it. My wife and I give a few checks based upon our ability to do it every year. The Red Cross gets one and the different charitable organizations that depend on gifts. We don’t burden ourselves, we simply give our check. They’re doing a good job and it’s fun if you have it. I certainly don’t give ten percent of my income to some church. Churches, whether you believe it or not, they’re a big business. They will deny that they are big business. Last week in Chicago, this man who has his own consulting…he’s a consultant in business, and he addressed all the Lutherans, the head plus those under the head, and he said, “Now, gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that you do not differ from any other business in the world who has my services. They need management, they need management control. And so, you are in big business, and don’t deny it.” And they’ll be the first to deny it.
I don’t know what it is, but I’m quite sure if you and I saw the portfolio of the Catholic or the Protestant church—that the Catholic, because they are united, the Protestants are divided in New York City if you took the Episcopal portfolio—it would stagger you. If you took the Catholic portfolio, which is a united body, and that portfolio no one outside of a very small little circle knows that portfolio. Anyone who says he knows it, he lies. And the few who know it won’t tell you, because it would be just staggering. That’s business. You have no time for God when you have to watch such large sums of money. How could you? How could you devote any time to really deep meditation when you have…I wouldn’t be surprised if it ran in excess of, say, fifty billion dollars…a tax exempt organization? You know how it grows in this world. You take the Ford Foundation, it’s only the third generation, and the Foundation has in it over two billion dollars. They’re giving it away, I think. ___(??), but it grows, you can’t stop it. So if you go back now 2,000 years ago, not three generations, it would stagger the mind of man. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care. That’s part of the play that those who are playing it must play. Let them play it.
Q: How do you work the law for others?
A: Same way. You have someone you love and they are in need, alright, you commune with yourself and you discuss with yourself the good fortune of the other. Just say, “Wasn’t that wonderful! It’s done, isn’t it! I’ll assume that you were…yes, it’s done.”
Q: Without bringing them in your…
A: Yes. Make it easy. He sees all, he knows all. Because you know it and you and he are one, doesn’t he know it?
Well, until Tuesday. We have four left, and then we’re leaving on the third…as I told you a one-way ticket, but you’ll know when I do come back. Thank you.
Photo: Holm and Rose out on the town, 1945