Creation Is Finished

Creation Is Finished

“I AM the beginning and the end, there is nothing to come that has not been, and is.”

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Blake saw all possible human situations as “already-made” states. He saw every aspect, every plot and drama as already worked out as “mere possibilities” as long as we are not in them, but as overpowering realities when we are in them. He described these states as “Sculptures of Los’s Halls”.

Distinguish therefore states from Individuals in those States. States change but Individual Identities never change nor cease… The Imagination is not a State.

Said Blake,

It is the Human Existence itself. Affection or Love becomes a State when divided from imagination.

Just how important this is to remember is almost impossible to say, but the moment the individual realizes this for the first time is the most momentous in his life, and to be encouraged to feel this is the highest form of encouragement it is possible to give.

This truth is common to all men, but the consciousness of it, and much more, the self-consciousness of it, is another matter.

The day I realized this great truth, that everything in my world is a manifestation of the mental activity which goes on within me, and that the conditions and circumstances of my life only reflect the state of consciousness with which I am fused, is the most momentous in my life. But the experience that brought me to this certainty is so remote from ordinary existence, I have long hesitated to tell it, for my reason refused to admit the conclusions to which the experience impelled me. Nevertheless, this experience revealed to me that I am supreme within the circle of my own state of consciousness and that it is the state with which I am identified that determines what I experience. Therefore it should be shared with all, for to know this is to become free from the world’s greatest tyranny, the belief in a second cause.

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Blessed are they whose imagination has been so purged of the beliefs in second causes they know that imagination is all, and all is imagination.

One day I quietly slipped from my apartment in New York City into some remote yesteryear’s countryside. As I entered the dining room of a large inn, I became fully conscious. I knew that my physical body was immobilized on my bed back in New York. Yet here I was as awake and as conscious as I have ever been. I intuitively knew that if I could stop the activity of my mind, everything before me would freeze. No sooner was the thought born than the urge to try it possessed me. I felt my head tighten, then thicken to a stillness. My attention concentrated into a crystal-clear focus, and the waitress walking, walked not. And I looked through the window and the leaves falling, fell not. And the family of four eating, ate not. And they lifting the food, lifted it not. Then my attention relaxed, the tightness eased, and of a sudden all moved onward in their course. The leaves fell, the waitress walked and the family ate. Then I understood Blake’s vision of the “Sculptures of Los’s Halls”.

“I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor.”

Creation is finished. 

“I AM the beginning and the end, there is nothing to come that has not been, and is.”

The world of creation is finished and its original is within us. We saw it before we set forth, and have since been trying to remember it and to activate sections of it. There are infinite views of it. Our task is to get the right view and by determined direction of our attention make it pass in procession before the inner eye. If we assemble the right sequence and experience it in imagination until it has the tone of reality, then we consciously create circumstances. This inner procession is the activity of imagination that must be consciously directed. We, by a series of mental transformations, become aware of increasing portions of that which already is, and by matching our own mental activity to that portion of creation which we desire to experience, we activate it, resurrect it, and give it life.

This experience of mine not only shows the world as a manifestation of the mental activity of the individual observer, but it also reveals our course of time as jumps of attention between eternal moments. An infinite abyss separates any two moments of ours. We, by the movements of our attention, give life to the “Sculptures of Los’s Halls”.

Think of the world as containing an infinite number of states of consciousness from which it could be viewed. Think of these states as rooms or mansions in the House of God, and like the rooms of any house, they are fixed relative to one another. But think of yourself, the Real Self, the Imaginative You, as the living, moving occupant of God’s House. Each room contains some of Los’s Sculptures, with infinite plots and dramas and situations already worked out but not activated. They are activated as soon as Human Imagination enters and fuses with them. Each represents certain mental and emotional activities. To enter a state, man must consent to the ideas and feelings which it represents.

These states represent an infinite number of possible mental transformations which man can experience. To move into another state or mansion necessitates a change of beliefs. All that you could ever desire is already present and only waits to be matched by your beliefs. But it must be matched, for that is the necessary condition by which alone it can be activated and objectified. Matching the beliefs of a state is the seeking that finds, the knocking to which it is opened, the asking that receives. Go in and possess the land.

The moment man matches the beliefs of any state, he fuses with it, and this union results in the activation and projection of its plots, plans, dramas, and situations. It becomes the individual’s home from which he views the world. It is his workshop, and, if he is observant, he will see outer reality shaping itself upon the model of his… Imagination.

It is for this purpose of training us in image-making that we were made subject to the limitations of the senses and clothed in bodies of flesh. It is the awakening of the imagination, the returning of His Son, that our Father waits for.

“The creature was made subject to vanity not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it.”

But the victory of the Son, the return of the prodigal, assures us that 

"the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons [children] of God.”

We were subjected to this biological experience because no one can know of imagination who has not been subjected to the vanities and limitations of the flesh, who has not taken his share of Sonship and gone prodigal, who has not experimented and tasted this cup of experience; and confusion will continue until man awakes and a fundamentally imaginative view of life has been reestablished and acknowledged as basic.

“I should preach… the unsearchable riches of Christ and make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ.”

Bear in mind that Christ in you is your imagination.

As the appearance of our world is determined by the particular state with which we are fused, so may we determine our fate as individuals by fusing our imaginations with ideals we seek to realize. On the distinction between our states of consciousness depends the distinction between the circumstances and conditions of our lives. Man, who is free in his choice of state, often cries out to be saved from the state of his choice.

“And ye shall cry out in that day, because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day. Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us.”

Choose wisely the state that you will serve. All states are lifeless until imagination fuses with them.

“All things when they are admitted are made manifest by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light,”

and

“Ye are the light of the world,”

by which those ideas to which you have consented are made manifest.

Hold fast to your ideal. Nothing can take it from you but your imagination. Don’t think of your ideal, think from it. It is only the ideals from which you think that are ever realized.

“Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”

and “the mouth of God”  is the mind of man.

Become a drinker and an eater of the ideals you wish to realize. Have a set, definite aim or your mind will wander, and wandering it eats every negative suggestion. If you live right mentally, everything else will be right. By a change of mental diet, you can alter the course of observed events. But unless there is a change of mental diet, your personal history remains the same.

You illuminate or darken your life by the ideas to which you consent. Nothing is more important to you than the ideas on which you feed. And you feed on the ideas from which you think. If you find the world unchanged, it is a sure sign that you are wanting in fidelity to the new mental diet, which you neglect in order to condemn your environment. You are in need of a new and sustained attitude.

You can be anything you please if you will make the conception habitual, for any idea which excludes all others from the field of attention discharges in action. The ideas and moods to which you constantly return define the state with which you are fused. Therefore train yourself to occupy more frequently the feeling of your wish fulfilled. This is creative magic. It is the way to work toward fusion with the desired state.

If you would assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled more frequently, you would be master of your fate, but unfortunately you shut out your assumption for all but the occasional hour. Practice making real to yourself the feeling of the wish fulfilled. After you have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled, do not close the experience as you would a book, but carry it around like a fragrant odor.

Instead of being completely forgotten, let it remain in the atmosphere communicating its influence automatically to your actions and reactions. A mood, often repeated, gains a momentum that is hard to break or check. So be careful of the feelings you entertain. Habitual moods reveal the state with which you are fused.

It is always possible to pass from thinking of the end you desire to realize, to thinking from the end. But the crucial matter is thinking from the end, for thinking from means unification or fusion with the idea: whereas in thinking of the end, there is always subject and object . . the thinking individual and the thing thought. You must imagine yourself into the state of your wish fulfilled, in your love for that state, and in so doing, live and think from it and no more of it. You pass from thinking of to thinking from by centering your imagination in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

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Awakened Imagination,

Neville Goddard

The Coin of Heaven

The Coin of Heaven

“Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?”And the prophet replied, “All poets believe that it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removed mountains: but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.”

Blake

“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” 

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Persuasion is an inner effort of intense attention. To listen attentively as though you heard is to evoke, to activate. By listening, you can hear what you want to hear and persuade those beyond the range of the outer ear. Speak it inwardly in your imagination only. Make your inner conversation match your fulfilled desire. What you desire to hear without, you must hear within. Embrace the without within and become one who hears only that which implies the fulfillment of his desire, and all the external happenings in the world will become a bridge leading to the objective realization of your desire.

Your inner speech is perpetually written all around you in happenings. Learn to relate these happenings to your inner speech and you will become self-taught. By inner speech is meant those mental conversations which you carry on with yourself. They may be inaudible when you are awake because of the noise and distractions of the outer world of becoming, but they are quite audible in deep meditation and dream. But whether they be audible or inaudible, you are their author and fashion your world in their  likeness.

“There is a God in heaven [and heaven is within you] that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these.”

Inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire is the way to create an intelligible world for yourself. Observe your inner speech for it is the cause of future action. Inner speech reveals the state of consciousness from which you view the world. Make your inner speech match your fulfilled desire, for your inner speech is manifested all around you in happenings.

“If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body. Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven by fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”

The whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of the Word . . Inner Speech. An uncritical observation of our inner talking will reveal to us the ideas from which we view the world. Inner talking mirrors our imagination, and our imagination mirrors the state with which it is fused. If the state with which we are fused is the cause of the phenomenon of our life, then we are relieved of the burden of wondering what to do, for we have no alternative but to identify ourselves with our aim, and inasmuch as the state with which we are identified mirrors itself in our inner speech, then to change the state with which we are fused, we must first change our inner talking. It is our inner conversations which make tomorrow’s facts.

“Put off the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt… and be renewed in the spirit of your mind… put on the new man, which is created in righteousness.”

Our minds, like our stomachs, are whetted by change of food.

Quintillian

Stop all of the old mechanical negative inner talking and start a new positive and constructive inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire. Inner talking is the beginning, the sowing of the seeds of future action. To determine the action, you must consciously initiate and control your inner talking. Construct a sentence which implies the fulfillment of your aim, such as “I have a large, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit”, or “I AM happily married”, “I AM wanted”, “I AM contributing to the good of the world”, and repeat such a sentence over and over until you are inwardly affected by it. Our inner speech represents in various ways the world we live in.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields! The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! So is a man’s fate born.

The Light of Asia

Ends run true to origins.

Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness. And the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.

D. H. Lawrence

Man attracts what he is. The art of life is to sustain the feeling of the wish fulfilled and let things come to you, not to go after them or think they flee away.

Observe your inner talking and remember your aim. Do they match? Does your inner talking match what you would say audibly had you achieved your goal? The individual’s inner speech and actions attract the conditions of his life. Through uncritical self-observation of your inner talking you find where you are in the inner world, and where you are in the inner world is what you are in the outer world. You put on the new man whenever ideals and inner speech match. In this way alone can the new man be born.

Inner talking matures in the dark. From the dark it issues into the light. The right inner speech is the speech that would be yours were you to realize your ideal. In other words, it is the speech of fulfilled desire.

“I AM that.”

There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone, and on no other mortal creature. These two are mind and speech; and the gift of mind and speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the immortals… and when he quits the body, mind and speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss.

Hermetica, Walter Scott’s translation

The circumstances and conditions of life are out pictured inner talking, solidified sound. Inner speech calls events into existence. In every event, is the creative sound that is its life and being. All that a man believes and consents to as true reveals itself in his inner speech. It is his Word, his life. Try to notice what you are saying in yourself at this moment, to what thoughts and feelings you are consenting. They will be perfectly woven into your tapestry of life. To change your life, you must change your inner talking, for “life”, said Hermes, “is the union of Word and Mind”. When imagination matches your inner speech to fulfilled desire, there will then be a straight path in yourself from within out, and the without will instantly reflect the within for you, and you will know reality is only actualized inner talking.

“Receive with meekness the inborn Word which is able to save your souls.”

Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious exercise of his imagination matching his inner speech to his fulfilled desire. Because man does not perfectly match them, the results are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain. Persistent assumption of the wish fulfilled is the means of fulfilling the intention. As we control our inner talking, matching it to our fulfilled desires, we can lay aside all other processes. Then we simply act by clear imagination and intention. We imagine the wish fulfilled and carry on mental conversations from that premise.

Through controlled inner talking from premises of fulfilled desire, seeming miracles are performed. The future becomes the present and reveals itself in our inner speech. To be held by the inner speech of fulfilled desire is to be safely anchored in life. Our lives may seem to be broken by events, but they are never broken so long as we retain the inner speech of fulfilled desire. All happiness depends on the active voluntary use of imagination to construct and inwardly affirm that we are what we want to be. We match ourselves to our ideals by constantly remembering our aim and identifying ourselves with it. We fuse with our aims by frequently occupying the feeling of our wish fulfilled. It is the frequency, the habitual occupancy, that is the secret of success. The oftener we do it, the more natural it is. Fancy assembles. Continuous imagination fuses.

It is possible to resolve every situation by the proper use of imagination. Our task is to get the right sentence, the one which implies that our desire is realized, and fire the imagination with it. All this is intimately connected with the mystery of “the still small voice”.

Inner talking reveals the activities of imagination, activities which are the causes of the circumstances of life. As a rule, man is totally unaware of his inner talking and therefore sees himself not as the cause but the victim of circumstance. To consciously create circumstance, man must consciously direct his inner speech, matching “the still small voice” to his fulfilled desires.

“He calls things not seen as though they were.”

Right inner speech is essential. It is the greatest of the arts. It is the way out of limitation into freedom. Ignorance of this art has made the world a battlefield and penitentiary where blood and sweat alone are expected, when it should be a place of marveling and wondering. Right inner talking is the first step to becoming what you want to be.

Speech is an image of mind, and mind is an image of God.

Hermetica, Scott translation

On the morning of April 12, 1953, my wife was awakened by the sound of a great voice of authority speaking within her and saying, “You must stop spending your thoughts, time, and money. Everything in life must be an investment.”

To spend is to waste, to squander, to layout without return. To invest is to layout for a purpose from which a profit is expected. This revelation of my wife is about the importance of the moment. It is about the transformation of the moment. What we desire does not lie in the future but in ourselves at this very moment. At any moment in our lives, we are faced with an infinite choice: “what we are and what we want to be”. And what we want to be is already existent, but to realize it we must match our inner speech and actions to it.

“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven.”

It is only what is done now that counts. The present moment does not recede into the past. It advances into the future to confront us, spent or invested. Thought is the coin of heaven. Money is its earthly symbol. Every moment must be invested, and our inner talking reveals whether we are spending or investing. Be more interested in what you are inwardly “saying now” than what you “have said” by choosing wisely what you think and what you feel now.

Any time we feel misunderstood, misused, neglected, suspicious, afraid, we are spending our thoughts and wasting our time. Whenever we assume the feeling of being what we want to be, we are investing. We cannot abandon the moment to negative inner talking and expect to retain command of life. Before us go the results of all that seemingly is behind. Not gone is the last moment . . but oncoming.

“My word shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

The circumstances of life are the muffled utterances of the inner talking that made them . . the word made visible.

“The Word”, said Hermes, “is Son, and the Mind is Father of the Word. They are not separate one from the other; for life is the union of Word and Mind.”

“He willed us forth from Himself by the Word of Truth.”

Let us  

"be imitators of God as dear children”

And use our inner speech wisely to mold an outer world in harmony with our ideal.

“The Lord spake by me, and His Word was in my tongue.”

The mouth of God is the mind of man. Feed God only the best.

“Whatsoever things are of good report… think on these things.”

The present moment is always precisely right for an investment, to inwardly speak the right word.  

"The word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life.”

You choose life and good and blessings by being that which you choose. Like is known to like alone. Make your inner speech bless and give good reports. Man’s ignorance of the future is the result of his ignorance of his inner talking. His inner talking mirrors his imagination, and his imagination is a government in which the opposition never comes into power.

If the reader asks, “What if the inner speech remains subjective and is unable to find an object for its love?”, the answer is: it will not remain subjective, for the very simple reason that inner speech is always objectifying itself. What frustrates and festers and becomes the disease that afflicts humanity is man’s ignorance of the art of matching inner words to fulfilled desire. Inner speech mirrors imagination, and imagination is Christ.

Alter your inner speech, and your perceptual world changes. Whenever inner speech and desire are in conflict, inner speech invariably wins. Because inner speech objectifies itself, it is easy to see that if it matches desire, desire will be objectively realized. Were this not so, I would say with Blake,

“Sooner murder an infant in its cradle  than nurse unacted desires.”

But I know from experience,

“The tongue… setteth on fire the course of nature.”

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Awakened Imagination,

Neville Goddard

Sealed Instructions

Sealed Instructions

The first power that meets us at the threshold of the soul’s domain is the power of imagination.

Dr. Franz Hartmann

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I was first made conscious of the power, nature, and redemptive function of imagination through the teachings of my friend Abdullah; and through subsequent experiences, I learned that Jesus was a symbol of the coming of imagination to man, that the test of His birth in man was the individual’s ability to forgive sin; that is, his ability to identify himself or another with his aim in life. Without the identification of man with his aim, the forgiveness of sin is an impossibility, and only the Son of God can forgive sin. Therefore, man’s ability to identify himself with his aim, though reason and his senses deny it, is proof of the birth of Christ in him. To passively surrender to appearances and bow before the evidence of facts is to confess that Christ is not yet born in you.

Although this teaching shocked and repelled me at first, for I was a convinced and earnest Christian, and did not then know that Christianity could not be inherited by the mere accident of birth but must be consciously adopted as a way of life . . it stole later on, through visions, mystical revelations, and practical experiences, into my understanding and found its interpretation in a deeper mood But I must confess that it is a trying time when those things are shaken which one has always taken for granted.

“Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.”

Not one stone of literal understanding will be left after one drinks the water of psychological meaning. All that has been built up by natural religion is cast into the flames of mental fire. Yet, what better way is there to understand Christ Jesus than to identify the central character of the Gospels with human imagination, knowing that, every time you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are literally mediating God to man and thereby feeding and clothing Christ Jesus and that, whenever you imagine evil against another, you are literally beating and crucifying Christ Jesus? Every imagination of man is either the cup of cold water or the sponge of vinegar to the parched lips of Christ.

Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor warned the prophet Zechariah.

When man heeds this advice, he will awake from the imposed sleep of Adam into the full consciousness of the Son of God. He is in the world, and the world is made by Him, and the world knows Him not: Human Imagination.

I asked myself many times, “If my imagination is Christ Jesus and all things are possible to Christ Jesus, are all things possible to me?”

Through experience, I have come to know that, when I identify myself with my aim in life, then Christ is awake in me. Christ is sufficient for all things.

“I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.”

What a comfort it is to know that all that I experience is the result of my own standard of beliefs; that I am the center of my own web of circumstances and that as I change, so must my outer world!

The world presents different appearances according as our states of consciousness differ. What we see when we are identified with a state cannot be seen when we are no longer fused with it. By state is meant all that man believes and consents to as true.

No idea presented to the mind can realize itself unless the mind accepts it.

It depends on the acceptance, the state with which we are identified, how things present themselves. In the fusion of imagination and states is to be found the shaping of the world as it seems. The world is a revelation of the states with which imagination is fused. It is the state from which we think that determines the objective world in which we live.

The rich man, the poor man, the good man, the thief are what they are by virtue of the states from which they view the world. On the distinction between these states depends the distinction between the worlds of these men. Individually so different is this same world. It is not the actions and behavior of the good man that should be matched but his point of view. Outer reforms are useless if the inner state is not changed. Success is gained not by imitating the outer actions of the successful but by right inner actions and inner talking.

If we detach ourselves from a state, and we may at any moment, the conditions and circumstances to which that union gave being vanish.

It was in the fall of 1933 in New York City that I approached Abdullah with a problem. He asked me one simple question, “What do you want?” I told him that I would like to spend the winter in Barbados, but that I was broke. I literally did not have a nickel. “If you will imagine yourself to be in Barbados”, said he, “thinking and viewing the world from that state of consciousness instead of thinking of Barbados, you will spend the winter there.” “You must not concern yourself with the ways and means of getting there, for the state of consciousness of already being in Barbados, if occupied by your imagination, will devise the means best suited to realize itself.”

Man lives by committing himself to invisible states, by fusing his imagination with what he knows to be other than himself, and in this union he experiences the results of that fusion. No one can lose what he has, save by detachment from the state where the things experienced have their natural life.

“You must imagine yourself right into the state of your fulfilled desire”, Abdullah told me, “and fall asleep viewing the world from Barbados.”

The world which we describe from observation must be as we describe it relative to ourselves. Our imagination connects us with the state desired. But we must use imagination masterfully, not as an onlooker thinking of the end, but as a partaker thinking from the end. We must actually be there in imagination. If we do this, our subjective experience will be realized objectively.

“This is not mere fancy”, said he, “but a truth you can prove by experience.”

His appeal to enter into the wish fulfilled was the secret of thinking from the end. Every state is already there as “mere possibility” as long as you think of it, but is overpoweringly real when you think from it. Thinking from the end is the way of Christ.

I began right there and then, fixing my thoughts beyond the limits of sense, beyond that aspect to which my present state gave being, towards the feeling of already being in Barbados and viewing the world from that standpoint.

He emphasized the importance of the state from which man views the world as he falls asleep. All prophets claim that the voice of God is chiefly heard by man in dreams.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.”

That night and for several nights thereafter, I fell asleep in the assumption that I was in my father’s house in Barbados. Within a month, I received a letter from my brother, saying that he had a strong desire to have the family together at Christmas and asking me to use the enclosed steamship ticket for Barbados. I sailed two days after I received my brother’s letter and spent a wonderful winter in Barbados.

This experience has convinced me that man can be anything he pleases if he will make the conception habitual and think from the end. It has also shown me that I can no longer excuse myself by placing the blame on the world of external things, that my good and my evil have no dependency except from myself, that it depends on the state from which I view the world how things present themselves.

Man, who is free in his choice, acts from conceptions which he freely, though not always wisely, chooses. All conceivable states are awaiting our choice and occupancy, but no amount of rationalizing will of itself yield us the state of consciousness which is the only thing worth having.

The imaginative image is the only thing to seek.

The ultimate purpose of imagination is to create in us “the spirit of Jesus”, which is continual forgiveness of sin, continual identification of man with his ideal. Only by identifying ourselves with our aim can we forgive ourselves for having missed it. All else is labor in vain. On this path, to whatever place or state we convey our imagination, to that place or state we will gravitate physically also.

“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

By sleeping in my father’s house in my imagination as though I slept there in the flesh, I fused my imagination with that state and was compelled to experience that state in the flesh also. 

So vivid was this state to me, I could have been seen in my father’s house had any sensitive entered the room where in imagination I was sleeping. A man can be seen where in imagination he is, for a man must be where his imagination is, for his imagination is himself. This I know from experience, for I have been seen by a few to whom I desired to be seen, when physically I was hundreds of miles away.

I, by the intensity of my imagination and feeling, imagining and feeling myself to be in Barbados instead of merely thinking of Barbados, had spanned the vast Atlantic to influence my brother into desiring my presence to complete the family circle at Christmas. Thinking from the end, from the feeling of my wish fulfilled, was the source of everything that happened as outer cause, such as my brother’s impulse to send me a steamship ticket; and it was also the cause of everything that appeared as results.

In Ideas of Good and Evil, W. B. Yeats, having described a few experiences similar to this experience of mine, writes:

If all who have described events like this have not dreamed, we should rewrite our histories, for all men, certainly all imaginative men, must be forever casting forth enchantments, glamour, illusions; and all men, especially tranquil men who have no powerful egotistic life, must be continually passing under their power.

Determined imagination, thinking from the end, is the beginning of all miracles.

I would like to give you an immense belief in miracles, but a miracle is only the name given by those who have no knowledge of the power and function of imagination to the works of imagination. Imagining oneself into the feeling of the wish fulfilled is the means by which a new state is entered. This gives the state the quality of is-ness. Hermes tells us:

That which is, is manifested; that which has been or shall be, is unmanifested, but not dead; for Soul, the eternal activity of God, animates all things.

The future must become the present in the imagination of the one who would wisely and consciously create circumstances. We must translate vision into Being, thinking of into thinking from. Imagination must center itself in some state and view the world from that state. Thinking from the end is an intense perception of the world of fulfilled desire. Thinking from the state desired is creative living.

Ignorance of this ability to think from the end is bondage. It is the root of all bondage with which man is bound. To passively surrender to the evidence of the senses underestimates the capacities of the Inner Self. Once man accepts thinking from the end as a creative principle in which he can cooperate, then he is redeemed from the absurdity of ever attempting to achieve his objective by merely thinking of it.

Construct all ends according to the pattern of fulfilled desire.

The whole of life is just the appeasement of hunger, and the infinite states of consciousness from which a man can view the world are purely a means of satisfying that hunger. The principle upon which each state is organized is some form of hunger to lift the passion for self-gratification to ever higher and higher levels of experience. Desire is the mainspring of the mental machinery. It is a blessed thing. It is a right and natural craving which has a state of consciousness as its right and natural satisfaction.

“But one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal.”

It is necessary to have an aim in life. Without an aim, we drift. “What wantest thou of Me?” is the implied question asked most often by the central figure of the Gospels. In defining your aim, you must want it.

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O, God.”

It is lack of this passionate direction to life that makes man fail of accomplishment.

The spanning of the bridge between desire, thinking of, and satisfaction, thinking from, is all-important. We must move mentally from thinking of the end to thinking from the end. This, reason could never do. By its nature, it is restricted to the evidence of the senses; but imagination, having no such limitation, can. Desire exists to be gratified in the activity of imagination. Through imagination, man escapes from the limitation of the senses and the bondage of reason.

There is no stopping the man who can think from the end. Nothing can stop him. He creates the means and grows his way out of limitation into ever greater and greater mansions of the Lord. It does not matter what he has been or what he is. All that matters is “what does he want?” He knows that the world is a manifestation of the mental activity which goes on within himself, so he strives to determine and control the ends from which he thinks. In his imagination he dwells in the end, confident that he shall dwell there in the flesh also. He puts his whole trust in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and lives by committing himself to that state, for the art of fortune is to tempt him so to do.

Like the man at the pool of Bethesda, he is ready for the moving of the waters of imagination. Knowing that every desire is ripe grain to him who knows how to think from the end, he is indifferent to mere reasonable probability and confident that through continuous imagination his assumptions will harden into fact.

But how to persuade men everywhere that thinking from the end is the only living, how to foster it in every activity of man, how to reveal it as the plenitude of life and not the compensation of the disappointed: that is the problem.

Life is a controllable thing. You can experience what you please once you realize that you are His Son, and that you are what you are by virtue of the state of consciousness from which you think and view the world,

“Son, Thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is Thine.”

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Awakened Imagination,

Neville Goddard

He Dreams in Me

He Dreams in Me

Neville Goddard Lecture, Mar 13, 1967

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The Old Testament calls upon God to awake, saying: “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever! Having hurled Himself into time/space, God is dreaming he is man and sees Himself as enslaved and cast off.

But in the New Testament, God succeeds in awakening in man, and in the Book of Ephesians calls upon man to “Awake and rise from the dead and Christ will give you life.” Tonight I will take the two and try to show you who this presence really is. Your own wonderful human imagination is God. It is your imagination who is calling upon you to awake, for you are all imagination and God is you and you in Him. Your external body is the imagination, and that is God Himself.

Let me begin by telling you what happened to me last Tuesday morning. Early in the morning, desiring to check the time I switched on the television to the “Today Show.” Hugh Downs, the master of ceremonies, having been giving a cue to ad-lib for the next thirty seconds or so, said: “Let me tell you of a dream I once had. In the dream I was viewing a tape of one of my shows, when I said to the producer: ‘Do you know, I don’t remember having seen any of these people,’ and the producer replied: ‘That’s understandable, for this show is to be taped next Friday.’ When the following Friday arrived, the show I had dreamed of only a few days before was taped.” In his dream, Hugh Downs merged with the future and lived an experience he did not remember.

Now, let me tell you [of] one who merged with the past and lived an experience of long ago. The lady writes: “I am seventy-two years old. In my dream I am a ten-year-old girl, asking my father to write in my autograph book. Having memorized a verse I wanted him to write, I dedicated it to him as he recorded it in my book. Then the dream ended.

Although I could not remember the poem prior to the dream, upon awakening I recalled every word in detail. A few days later, while visiting my daughter I told her of the dream; and when I recited the poem my daughter went to her library and . . removing an old autograph book I had given her many years before . . turned to the page where the verse was autographed by my third grade teacher.” Returning sixty-two years, this lady merged with a fact and remembered an experience of long ago.

The she told me of a little boy of four, who . . living next door . . comes to see her often. One day he told her he had always known her and that there would never be a time when they did not know each other. Describing an incident of long ago, he looked out of the window and said: “Do you see that bush? As many leaves as are on that bush are the years, and I will know you when my head grows and reaches the sky.” Then one day he told her he had a dream that everything was nothing.

Modern man now concludes that the entire history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively. That you can merge with a section of the beginning or future relative to this moment, and experience that portion of history. How can that be? Because you are now merged with a dream.

Awakening in the morning, you think you had a wonderful dream last night; yet while you were dreaming, the experience was a reality. Awake, the dream becomes subjective. Why? Because you have once more merged with this section of time. While you are experiencing the dream, it is objective and real.

If you would only realize that the depth of your own being (which is your human imagination) is trying to instruct you, trying to persuade you, to get you aroused, as my friend’s dream of the other night. Starting from the center God is working towards the surface, so it takes a while for Him to awaken and reach your surface mind. But while he is moving He is influencing your surface mind, and when He arrives you and He are no longer two, but one! You can tell when He is moving toward the surface, for He begins to question the reality of the world in which he lives.

If a lady can return and so merge with the past that she can relive an experience of long ago in detail, and a man can advance into the future and interview those who will be taped the following Friday . . where is the experience of the past and where is next Friday’s show? Is everything already finished and we simply tune in on certain states? Yes, for this is a dream which you can modify or radically change. In fact you are called upon to revise every day of your life and sometimes even to eradicate it.

This is a world of death and everyone here is dead, dreaming the dream of life. In the beginning we all agreed to dream in concert and no one has ever violated that agreement. There are those, however, who would not agree to this cruel experiment, as told us in the 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the form of the parable of the prodigal son.

All through scripture you are told that God loves the second son. He loves Jacob and hates Esau. He loves Isaac and banishes Ishmael. The second son . . he who enters the world of death to become a slave, hungers, awakens, and . . coming to his senses . . remembers the Father who gave him birth. And when he returns the Father gives him the ring, the robe, and kills that fatted calf, for “Your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.” You and I, while living in this world of death are that second son, destined to awaken and remember the Father who gave us birth.

Now let me share a vision of a lady. She said: “While gazing at the fish in our pond and thinking of nothing in particular I heard a masculine voice say: ‘You have run the race. You have fought the good fight.’ That night as I fell asleep I heard the voice again, but this time the pronoun was changed to: ‘I have run the race. I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith.’ May I tell you: having had that experience, this lady is at the end of the journey. She has kept the faith made in the beginning.

Listen to these words: “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” The word translated “among” is “en” meaning “radiating from within.” So, radiating from within you, stands one whom you do not know. And the word translated “stands” means “a covenant.” from within you is the covenant you made with yourself, which is: you will keep the faith, and you will not turn until the race is finished. And what a race it has been!

We suffer because we are sharing in creation’s cruel dream. In the beginning as the gods in scripture, we agreed to do it. As the Elohim we came down into the world of death by entering death’s door, the human skull. Laying yourself down in the grave of man, you took upon yourself all of his limitations and weaknesses, and . . although you will die from this section of time . . there is no final death. You and I are heirs to the universe, destined to join that one being that is called the Lord.

There is not a thing you can imagine but what already is. Eternity exists. When you imagine, you claim that which already exits by identifying yourself with the state you desire to dream into objective reality. Just as the lady slipped into a section of her past and relived it as though it happened for the first time, you can slip into any section of time and live an event you desire to externalize here. We are dreaming the dream of life until we awake. So I say, advisedly: God . . your own wonderful human imagination . . dreams in you.

The 44th Psalm is a Maskil of the Sons of Korah. The word “Maskil” means “a special, very serious instruction.” The word “Korah” means “one who removes the hair on his head.” (Some of our priesthoods do that today to imply that they have divine instruction which others do not possess.) But the special instruction stated in the 44th Psalm is that which one gives to one’s self: “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever!”

Now listen to the words of Blake. Claiming that the poem, “Jerusalem” was dictated by the brothers on high, he begins it in this manner:

“Awake! Awake, O sleeper of the land of shadows, awake! Expand! I AM in you and you in me, mutual in love divine: I AM not a God afar off, I AM a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me: Lo! We are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense!”

Then he tells us that you and I turned away down the valleys dark, by saying: “We are not One: we are Many.”

God, speaking in this great poem, calls upon man to awake, saying: “I AM not a God afar off. Within your bosoms I reside and you reside in me; Lo! We are One.” This I know from experience. Without loss of identity you and I are One being. We are the brothers who collectively form the Lord. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one compound unity one made up of others. There is only the one Lord, who is our own wonderful human imagination. It is He who is dreaming this world in which we find ourselves.

Now let me share with you a very precious experience of a gentleman who teaches at UCLA. In his dream he encounters a teacher he has little or no respect for; but when he discovers the man to be the great examiner, his feelings change from apathy to warmth and respect.

Suddenly the exam had begun, and my friend must write his name, the date, and the hour. As he recorded his name, Monday, and the time of 4:10, a thrill ran through him; and he heard a deep masculine voice say: “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ enters in, but he who does the will of the Father who is in heaven.” (You will find this statement in the 7th chapter of the Book of Matthew). When one begins to hear the words of the Father as recorded in scripture, that one is beginning to awaken from this dream of life.

In the 1st chapter of John, it is said that when Andrew found Jesus, he remained with him because it was the tenth hour. A day is counted from 6:00 o’clock. Broken down into three four-hour watches of the day or night, 4:00 o’clock is always the tenth hour.

Now, this is all symbolism. Ten does not mean 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon, but that moment in time when the creative power of God is being explained. The number ten whose letter “Yod” begins the name of God (YOD HE VAU HE) [pron. YOD HEY VAV HEY] carries the symbol of a hand, the creative hand of God. Man is separated from all other animals by reason of a hand. That which looks like a hand in the monkey or ape can convey food to the mouth but it cannot fashion, make, or create. Give a man a hand and you have a creator. You have formed in the image of his Father who is God. So here in the tenth hour the creative power of God is being revealed to my friend.

As the dream began, my friend saw the world he disliked symbolized as a person who became the great examiner to test his ability to overcome it . . to modify or radically change it. And the test began at 4:10. Going over my notes, I recalled that last October, while in a dream at night, I was teaching, when I glanced at my wristwatch to discover it was 4:10 o’clock. Then I continued to explain the word of God for what appeared to be an hour or so, looked at my watch again only to find that it was still 4:10. Believing my watch had stopped, I awoke to discover it was not on my wrist, nor was it 4:10 in the morning.

Here is a vivid experience of a duplicate dream, and scripture tells us that if the dream repeats itself the thing is fixed, and the Lord will shortly bring it to pass. God’s creative power is now unfolding in my friend. Now he knows his own wonderful human imagination is God. That the great I AMness in man is God and that all things are possible to Him. Now the challenge is his. Whatever he wants is! All he has to do is adjust his thinking to the state desired until it becomes alive within him, and at that moment the state will objectify itself in his world.

A subjective desire reflected upon becomes objective. Just like the dream last night. Although subjective when you awaken and once more merge with this section of the dream, during the night it seemed the only reality.

You can take off this section of the dream, and as you merge with another, it will seem to be the only reality. The whole vast world is finished, and you and I are merged in a dream from which we are awakening.

The lady, while in a waking dream, heard the voice as she watched fish . . the symbol of those who accept the gospel of salvation. Those who call upon themselves to awaken rather than call upon a god to awaken them.

So in the Old Testament, God is called upon to “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake, O sleeper and rise from the dead.” God is urged to awake in the Old Testament, because God became man that man may become God, while in the New Testament the plea is for man to awake. As you test your creative power you will discover who you are. All of these acts of scripture will come to you in audible form, and you will awaken to find yourself moving into complete fulfillment of the story of Jesus Christ.

Everyone has kept the faith. No one can come down into this world and violate that agreement. You and I agreed to dream in concert before we entered death’s door, the human skull. And one day we are going to awake as the poet said:

“He has awakened from the dream of life. ‘Tis we who lost in stormy visions Keep with phantoms the unprofitable strife.”

God dreams in you and you can test him any time if you are alert, for He steals into your conscious mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy. Sit down and think of a friend and watch this wonderful, moving being create mental images of him. The God of the universe is one with your wonderful human imagination.

He works in your depth, underlying all of your faculties, including perception. Then suddenly you find him moving in a serpentine manner in the form of creative fancy. When you think of someone you can catch Him; and then you will discover who God really is, for He is all within you.

Tonight take a mere wish and see it in your mind’s eye as fulfilled. Contemplate it. Merge and lose yourself completely in it. Allow your wish to take on objectivity, all the various tones of reality, so that it seems now to be the only reality. Then break it and return once more to merge in this section of your dream, and reflect upon that which was so real only a moment before. Do that and no power on earth or in the universe can stop that which you have imagined from objectification.

Simply rest in confidence that it will be objectified, and keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is simply that moment when you do not make any effort to make it so, because you know it is already so! Do not labor to add to it or take from it. It is going to happen just as you judged it as good and very good.

You try it. If all things were made by God, and without Him was not anything made that was made, and you imagined and it came to pass . . then you must come to the conclusion that what is done grows from what is finished. In the beginning it was only a wish, but in the end it became a fact. So what is done grows from what is finished.

The creative power of the universe stems from imagination . . the real man . . for man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself. Imagination is not a God afar off, but a brother and a friend.

As the Elohim we were brothers, not strangers, but . . as the parable tells us . . not all left our heavenly home. We ventured forth, agreeing to dream in concert or we wouldn’t be here; and failure is inconceivable, for the end is simply to awaken from the eternal dream of life.

We have suffered because we are sharers in creation’s cruel dream. The story is told us in the Book of Job. Everyone plays the part of Job. It’s a crude experiment, but the end is so glorious that one forgets the pain, as told us in the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans: “I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing to the glory to be revealed in me.” We all share in the suffering, because we are dreaming in concert, dreaming the most cruel dreams; but it takes all to awaken, and in the awakening we are greater than we were prior to the beginning of the dream.

I know people see an absolute God but if God could not . . [text corrupt] . . it would be eternal darkness. God is a creator, ever creating, ever transcending whatever He created prior to that moment when He made the commitment and entered the world of death to overcome it. That is the challenge.

Now, in the Old Testament you are calling upon God to awake, for when He awakes you are redeemed. And in the New, God did awake and is telling the world that man must awake. To no longer call upon God to awake but man, for man and God are one. God became as you are that you can become as He is. So no longer call upon a god in some remote place and time, but call upon self . . the one and only creative power of the world. Nothing can be created without creative power. But nothing!

If you start to imagine that things are [as] you desire them to be regardless of reason and your senses denial and lose yourself in that end just as though it were true, by feeling the thrill of accomplishment; and rest in confidence that it is done; and your desire projects itself on a screen of space so you can see it in your world . . then you are the one they are talking about in scripture. Are you not told that by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made?

And God is a person! It is a person who stands among you, not an impersonal force. Find that person and you will find him to be yourself. You are a person, and when you know what you did and see the results thereof, then you will have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David.

Christ is not another! Christ in you is the hope of glory! Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? That’s what the apostle asks in the 13th chapter of 2 Corinthians. Well, ask that of anyone in the world and if he is brutally honest with himself he will tell you he cannot know it until it has been experienced by him, yet here is the challenge: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”

Now, if Christ is the one quoted as radiating from within you, and by him all things are made and without him is not anything made that is made (even the bad), then you must find him. If there is only one maker, is it not He who made your awful day, your awful month, your awful year? If you are brutally honest with yourself, you will admit that what happened was related to your imaginal acts.

When you recognize and acknowledge this, you have found him. And because He is a person and you are a person, you know exactly who He is. Now, walk with your head up high, knowing that you have learned from your mistakes; and from now on try to imagine the best as you perceive the best to be, knowing that these acts must project themselves in this world. Then you will awaken and rejoin the brothers, for “I AM not a God afar off, in me lo we are one, forgiving all evil and seeking no recognition.” If we are one, why should I demand recognition? Why not forgive all, for they know not what they do.

So I tell you: the God that you formerly dreamed in you was your own wonderful human imagination. Put him to the test. Conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of your desire and . . to the best of your ability . . merge with it. If you succeed in moving right into the scene, do you know it will become objective before it is seen in this section of time? It will become as objective as this world. Then when you break the spell, that which was objectively real only a moment before will be to you as a dream, but you will know it to be. Then wait in confidence that it will happen here, and when it does share it with others, that they may believe or not believe you; but tell them, because we are all one, so in the end you are simply telling yourself. That is the eternal story.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Enter The Dream

Enter The Dream

Neville Goddard Lecture, Nov 21, 1969

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God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Embracing the fires of experience, God was consumed by the flames, rose from their ashes, and continues to rise as Jesus Christ, or Divine Imagination. Good and evil are not conditions imposed by some benevolent deity, but states the soul must experience in order to surpass them and awaken as God Himself.

Tonight I will share with you an experience of a friend, a lady who wrote, saying: “In my dream I possessed the power to be anything I wanted to be. The moment I observed the being or thing I became it, felt its emotion, and shared its thoughts and environment. This I did throughout the night and awoke reluctantly because I was so enjoying the experience.”

Now let me tell you what Aldous Huxley wrote about his friend, D. H. Lawrence: “To be with Lawrence was an adventure, because he was not of the order of this world, but belonged to another universe. When I was with him and he shared his experiences, I felt that he knew what it was to be a tree, a daisy, a breaking wave, or the mysterious moon itself. He saw things the mortal eye could not see. He was a sensitive, intelligent man who could cook, sew, embroider, and do woodwork to perfection; yet he could sit alone doing nothing and be completely happy. He could put himself into the skin of an animal and describe in the most convincing detail its dim, inhuman thoughts.”

I am quite sure my friend never read that letter, but I gave her my immortal eyes. The eye of Imagination is now open in her and she has shared her experience of going from state to state, from things to persons, knowing their feelings and emotions. How is that possible? Because God is the only actor.

Blake makes this statement: “Eternity Exists and All things in Eternity Independent of Creation which was an act of Mercy. By this it will be seen that I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep into which the Soul may fall in its deadly dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.”

Everything in the world is yourself pushed out. Every animal there can be entered by you, and you can experience its emotion, for that animal is your very self.

You are the animating power of the universe. All things were made by you and without you was not anything made that was made, for you are life itself. This I know from experience. The universe is alive in you. It has no life on the outside. It is yours to animate, to stop, to let go, and stop again. Blake was right when he said: “God only acts and is in existing beings or men,” for God is the only actor, acting imaginatively in the human imagination.

While seated here you can see your home in your mind’s eye, but it does not have the cubic reality as does this room. But one day you will think of something and see it more vividly than you now see the speaker. You will enter it, not as a shadow, but as a 3-dimensional space. I have sat in a chair or rested on a bed with my eyes closed as in sleep and seen what I could not see if the lids were open. Knowing exactly where I was and what I was doing, I allowed consciousness to follow vision and stepped into that image which closed itself around me as I set out to explore that world.

I now know the truth of Blake’s words: “If the Specter would enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought. If he would make a friend and companion of any one of these images which always intrigues him to leave mortal things as he must know, then will he rise from the dead; then will he meet the Lord in the air and then he will be Happy.”

Many times while sitting in my chair or lying on my bed, my inner eye has opened and I have seen what no mortal eye could see. Then I would enter into the image by allowing my consciousness to move on its fiery chariot of contemplative thought. Clothed as I am, the world calls me Neville; but I . . a conscious being . . have moved out of this body and into a world which instantly clothed itself around me; and I explored that world, clothed in a body just as solidly real as the one I left on the bed or chair. If anyone had entered the room they would have thought Neville was sleeping; yet I was fully awake, consciously aware of being separated from my external self.

Look at yourself in the mirror and you are seeing the mask God is wearing in this world of death, but you cannot see the immortal you who cannot die. Your friend or relative may appear to die, but he is not that which is put into the furnace and consumed or buried in a grave. He is that which his I AM is conscious of being, exploring other worlds just as real as this until he experiences the mystery of scripture.

You see, God only acts. Sitting in my chair and seeing what I should not see, I acted by consciously entering into the image I was viewing, to discover it was not a flat surface, but a 3-dimensional reality, complete and ready for occupancy.

My friend knows what it is like to become anything that intrigues her, and I am quite sure she never read the letter Huxley wrote of his friend D. H. Lawrence. This is the same Huxley who showed no interest when I tried to tell him of my birth from above, of David and the visions I have shared with you. He liked me as a friend but he had his own limitations, as everyone does. In a certain social world, if you pronounce a certain word differently you are cataloged as one who is not “in,” as it were, and Huxley would not listen to my visions because I did not speak as he thought everyone should. I could have told him things beyond the wildest dreams of his friend D. H. Lawrence, but because of his little stumbling block Aldous could not hear my words.

But I tell you who are seated here tonight: you are the only God. You will know this from experience, for the day is coming when . . instead of seeing your thoughts in your mind’s eye, you will see them 3-dimensionally, just as you are now seeing the speaker. When the eye of imagination opens you will instantly move into the thought, whether it is regarding something that took place ten thousand years ago or exists in what you might think to be the future. I tell you: there is nothing that is not here and now, ready for you to enter and become one with.

One day you will realize, like Blake, that neither the just nor the wicked are supreme states, and you will be able to forgive everyone for what he is doing or has done. You will know that although his action seems horrible, based upon this level, he is expressing a state and must do as the state dictates. Good and evil are simply states of experience through which the soul of Man must pass in order to awaken to the being that he really is. He must embrace the fires of experience and be consumed before he can rise from the ashes to be one with the being who sent him.

I can’t tell you the thrill that is in store for you when the eye of imagination opens, for only then will you be actually seeing for the first time. And when the ears are open you will hear what no mortal ear can hear, as you see what no mortal eye can see. A week or so ago I went to an office regarding my Medicare, and I was asked to prove that I would be sixty-five on my next birthday. I knew that at one time I had obtained my baptismal certificate, but I hadn’t seen it in years and had no idea where it was. Two nights ago, about 1:30 A.M., my divine brothers said to me: “Your baptismal certificate is in your wallet.” I awoke, opened the dresser drawer and there, inside a wallet my wife had given me back in 1938, was the baptismal certificate I had obtained in 1924 when I needed it to go to London during my dancing career. So I know that when the eye and ear of imagination is open, every desire of the heart will be seen and heard. That is your destiny.

I say: you are God, the only actor in this world. No matter what you imagine, God is acting. He is the only actor, acting by imagining. You can imagine anything, cover the act with faith by believing in its reality, and it will come to pass. When Blake spoke of eternity in his statement: “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy,” he was referring to the little garment of flesh and blood you wear. Your garment is. It is eternal. It is a garment that anyone can . . and many will . . wear. In my case, this is a garment in which one awakes. I am not the garment called Neville, any more than I am any part I ever played on Broadway. I was in six plays but I never was the characters I played there, but simply the actor. And so it is with God. He is the only actor in eternity and God is the human imagination. It is the human imagination who plotted the entire play before he came down and assumed these eternal bodies of limitation and death. And it is the human imagination who will rise from these eternal bodies into Divine Imagination from whence he came.

In the Book of Genesis we are told: “The serpent spoke and said to the woman, ‘You will not die for God knows that when you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, your eye will open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” This is something you must know in order to surpass and rise beyond it as Divine Imagination. The serpent knew that as you ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, although you would not die, you would embrace the fire of experience, be consumed as its victim, and rise from its ashes as God Himself. That is the story of scripture.

Blake added this wonderful thought, saying that we left paradise following the serpent. This implies that we did not begin here on earth, but left paradise following the serpent of generation who told us that when we embraced the great experience of good and evil we would be consumed in its fire and yet not die, but would rise from it. In his book, John tells it in a lovely way as: “I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.” So we did not begin here, but . . coming out from the Father . . we found these garments that seemed to begin in time, but really are an eternal part of the structure of the universe. In my own case this little garment seemed to begin in 1905, but it was always so. It was always growing into manhood and departing in its sixties. Always appearing, occupied by God, moving towards a certain point and then disappearing.

All of these are but garments to be picked up and worn. People think they are the garments they wear. That is because they do not know who God is, for he is in the one who is wearing the garment. It is God, your own wonderful human imagination, who acts and is in existing beings or men. There is no other God, no other actor in the universe.

If you want to test God, you may. Your immortal eyes and ears need not be open to test your creative power. Simply assume you are the one you want to be. Remain faithful to your assumption and, although everything denies it, you will become it. It does not matter who you are or what the world thinks of you; anything is possible to the “I” of imagination. As I mentioned earlier, had Aldous only listened to my message, rather than my English, I could have told him things beyond the wildest dreams of D. H. Lawrence. But I am a Colonial in his eyes and, like all Englishmen; the Colonials are looked down upon. If you don’t speak with the Oxford or Cambridge accent, you are a Colonial in their eyes and not one of the boys.

If Aldous had only listened, I could have told him what it was like to not only be the wave, but to be the ocean. When I was but a boy, years before puberty (in fact it stopped at puberty), I would know the night it was going to happen and was afraid to go to sleep. It was marvelous to be the ocean, but to be the breaking wave (a small portion of my being) was frightening. I . . the ocean would toss myself . . the wave into the skies and then catch myself upon my own bosom as I fell. This experience would happen to me once a month over a period of years. I could have told him what it was like to be infinite light with no circumference, but my accent put barriers in his mind and he could not hear me. This is true the world over.

People judge from appearances, as the individual’s true being is unseen by mortal eyes. God comes to us unknown and unseen; but in his own wonderful mysterious manner he lets us discover who he is, and when we do it is in a first person, singular, present tense experience.

I am not trying to flatter you when I tell you that you are God. Everyone is. The one who murders is one with the one who is murdered. The rapist is one with his victim. These are all God’s experiences of good and evil in order to surpass good and evil and rise as Divine Imagination who is God Himself. You and I came down and, embracing the fire of experience, we have been consumed by it. Many a time the little garment that we wore turned to ash; and from that ash we found a new body, just like the old one, only new, healthy and wonderful with not a thing missing, to be consumed once more. And we will keep on being consumed, one after the other, until that moment in time when we rise as the Lord Jesus Christ who is God Himself, to be consumed and restored no more. So when Blake said: “God only acts,” he really meant it. God not only acts, he is the only actor. When you begin to imagine, God is acting and what you imagine will happen.

I was late getting here tonight. A friend came for lunch yesterday who, knowing the friend who brings me here every week, said: “Isn’t he unreliable?” and I immediately answered, “No! Never.” She didn’t want to hear that and is a very intense lady who knows how to reach him. Today for the first time my friend called to say he couldn’t make it. An intense imaginal act produced what the lady wanted to hear, but she will never get the satisfaction of hearing me say he was ever late or did not come.

There are people in this world whose surface veneer appears to be altogether wonderful, but below that surface there is an intensity and they do not know that they are only hurting themselves. She can’t touch me, although undoubtedly she has tried; but if she did it would boomerang in a way she would not know. I love her dearly, but she is intense and also of the same school that if you are not of a certain physical background you are not “in.”

I have told you unnumbered times that I have no feeling towards any aristocracy in the world. Though I speak of being a descendant of Abraham, it is not after the flesh, but after the spirit; for in the state of Abraham I believed the story that was told me before that the world was. There is no physical aristocracy. Only the aristocracy of the spirit consisting of those who are called and embodied into the body of the Risen Lord. I could tell her this forever and she would not understand. She believes in physical aristocracy, and there is none.

Do not allow anyone to try to impress you with his greatness relative to yours. I have never been able to feel anyone to be my superior. Physically, yes, they can knock me down with one blow. Intellectually, yes . . no question about it. Financially, certainly, but I cannot meet anyone that I believe to be my superior. He may be an intellectual giant, a mathematical giant, a musical giant, a giant in a thousand ways, but that does not mean I feel inferior to him.

I was amused today when I looked at my baptismal certificate. My father’s occupation was listed as a meat vendor. He had a butcher shop. If this lady had seen that I would no longer be socially acceptable to her. But I urge you to never allow anyone to make you feel less than, because you are infinitely greater than all of the characters of the world put together, as you are God who is playing all the parts. And you will play them all. The phony, and the decent ones, the rich man, the poor man, the known, the unknown . . you have played them all or you would not be here. The reason why you are here is because you are on the verge of awakening. And you will awaken from the dream to discover that you created the play, and finding no one to play the parts, you have played them yourself. And when you have played them all, you will awaken by a certain, definite series of events that take place within you. Then the inner eye and ear will open as mine did this morning, when the brothers told me where to find my baptismal certificate. I do not think I have looked in that wallet for thirty years. I do not carry a wallet. I do not drive and my wife carries the money and gives me whatever money I want, so what would I do with a wallet? Yet the crumpled little yellow page was there, just as my brothers said it would be.

I tell you: there isn’t a thing that does not exist now and here. We speak of the moon as billions of years old; but you cannot measure your age because there never was a time when you were not, nor will there ever be a time when you will cease to be.  You didn’t begin in time. You came down into time . . which you, yourself created . . to experience good and evil, to expand the being that you always were. Even though your birth certificate shows you began in time, you didn’t, for you are the wearer of the garment. You are its actor who is God Himself. You cannot even say God is near, because nearness implies separation. He is not near, for when you say, “I AM you are proclaiming He is your very self.

Begin now to believe in your true Being who is God, and whatever you imagine to be so, firmly believe it is so, and it will be so.

Let us go into the Silence.

v. Self Concept Versus Self

 v. Self Concept Versus Self

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43 The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world’s reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. Here it walks at home, where what it sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for. This is its purpose—that you come without a self and make one as you go along. And by the time you reach “maturity,” you have perfected it to meet the world on equal terms, at one with its demands.

44 A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God. The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil world.

45 This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good. This aspect never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation and at last to open insult and abuse.

46 The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. Yet it is here the learning of the world has set its sights, for it is here the world’s “reality” is set to see to it the idol lasts.

47 Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this: “I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what I am.” On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept and those who walk on them will not escape.

48 Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what you are has now become His sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved and kept in darkness where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

49 Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning, they do not exist. They are not given, and they must be made. Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear. What is a concept but a thought to which its maker gives a meaning of his own? Concepts maintain the world. But they can not be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them are made within the world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways, and finally “maturing” in its thought. They are ideas of idols painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single picture representing truth.

50 A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it is for and therefore cannot picture what it is. Yet is all learning which the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world’s laws and never seek to go beyond its roads nor realize the way you see yourself. Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you see this concept of the self must be undone, if any peace of mind is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. For otherwise you would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and greater terror would arise in you.

51 Thus are the Holy Spirit’s lesson plans arranged in easy steps that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf. Let us consider then what proof there is that you are what your brother made of you. For even though you do not yet perceive that this is what you think, you surely learned by now that you behave as if it were. Does he react for you? And did he know exactly what would happen? Could he see your future and ordain before it came what you should do in every circumstance? He must have made the world as well as you to have such prescience in the things to come.

52 That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this your contribution? Who is, then, the “you” who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept’s foolishness and merely think of this— there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what you are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could need defense?

53 Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that in the light the one who would not think it true is you. And what would happen to the world you know if all its underpinnings were removed? Your concept of the world depends upon this concept of the self. And both would go if either one were ever raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit does not seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a little question might be raised.

54 There are alternatives about the thing that you must be. You might for instance be the thing you chose to have your brother be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way for active choice and some acknowledgment that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception’s law that what you see reflects the state of perceiver’s mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose and let the others go.

55 Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question. Something must have gone before these concepts of the self. And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to the second from the first is that you somehow entered in the choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother is. And you must share his guilt because you chose it for him in the image of your own. While only he was treacherous before, now must you be condemned along with him.

56 The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts. It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple statement that it thinks. And what can think has choice and can be shown that different thoughts have different consequence. So it can learn that everything it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of the self appear to answer what it does not know

57 Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept while you perceive a self which interacts with evil and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself. To see a guilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.

58 You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes along. Each one will show the changes in your own relationships as your perception of yourself is changed. There will be some confusion every time there is a shift, but be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening its grasp upon your mind. And be sure and happy in the confidence that it will go at last and leave your mind at peace. The role of the accuser will appear in many places and in many forms. And each will seem to be accusing you. Yet have no fear it will not be undone.

59 The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question and been recognized as made on no assumptions which would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

60 I do not know the thing I am and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will tell you of Itself

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Source

A Course In Miracles,

Chapter 31, The Simplicity of Salvation,

Course in Miracles Society