"If I can persuade myself of the reality of that which I have imagined, no power in the world can stop it from coming to pass. Man creates his objective world out of imagination and faith."
IF YOU CAN REALLY BELIEVE = Neville Goddard – 15th June 1970
I trust that you will find tonight’s message a very practical one, because today there are so many reading the paper and believing what they see and what they hear on radio and TV about the depression and the recession and this, that and the other.
Now tonight let me tell you Who You Are.
We are told in Scripture – this is the 19th chapter, the 26th verse, of Matthew:
“With God all things are possible.”
Then we are told in the earliest Gospel, the book of Mark, the 9th chapter, the 23rd verse: “All things are possible to him who believes.”
Divine Imagining has no restrictions placed upon it. Human imagining has one restriction placed upon it to believe. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So they equate man – he is speaking of you with God, but on this level, it is believing. Can you believe it? There is no other limitation, other than man’s capacity to believe what he has imagined. “All things are possible to him who believes.”
So, the only restriction placed upon man is his ability to believe what his reason, what his senses, deny – that’s all. No other restriction.
Now I’ll turn to the 115th Psalm, and here I think the whole vast world has been guilty of this. The Psalmist claims:
“Our God is in the heavens… Their idols are made” – first of all:
“Our God is in the heavens, and He does what He pleases,” (Psalm 115:1)
No matter what it is, He does what He pleases.
“Their idols are made with human hands of silver and gold. They have voices, but they speak not,”
or rather:
“They have mouths, but they speak not; and eyes that do not see. They have ears that do not hear……… and they have hands that do not feel, and feet that do
not walk, and there is no sound from their throats. Those who make them are like them, and those who believe in them are like them.”
(Psalm 115:5-8)
To believe in anything outside of yourself as the cause of the phenomena of life, you are believing in something made with the human hands – I don’t care what you call it. Now, who is this God who does as He pleases that is equated with man?
Well, you try to think of anything other than your wonderful human imagination.
“Our God is in the heavens,” and we are told that, “Heaven is within you,” in the 17th chapter of the book of Luke; “God is within you” (Luke 17:21). If He is within me, what in me does anything that it pleases? Nothing but my imagination. I can imagine anything in the world. The most incredible thing, I can imagine, but as man, one condition is imposed upon me: I must believe it.
If I can persuade myself of the reality of that which I have imagined, no power in the world can stop it from coming to pass. Man creates his objective world out of imagination and faith. These are the substances out of which he actually projects and objectifies his world. There is nothing but God, and God is man’s own wonderful human imagination.
“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.”
[Blake, from “Annotations to Berkeley” and “The Laocoon”]
So, Divine Imagining – yes, it’s instantaneous; but when it’s keyed low into the human form, then there is one condition imposed upon it:
Can I believe it?
So, I now come to the point of faith. What is faith?
Faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope.
So, I have a hope. I would like to be this, that or the other in this world. Or I would like someone – a friend of mine – to be this, that or the other. Now I must appropriate it subjectively. I go down in my imagination and I simply conceive a scene, which would imply that it’s true, and I appropriate it.
How do I appropriate it? I create a scene, which would imply that it is true, bringing the individual or friends before me. I could have friends tell me, “Have you heard the good news?” and I will act as though I didn’t.
“No, what is the good news?”
“Have you heard the news about …” – and they mention my friend, and I listen eagerly to what they are telling me about my friend. I am appropriating subjectively my objective hope.
All I have to do then is to persist in that state. As Shakespeare said in his “Anthony and Cleopatra”:
“It hath been taught us from the primal state that that which is was wished until it were.”
He used the pronoun he, but you can use it of anything in this world. But he said that he which, wishing that being to come into being – but you can wish it for a home, a place, or anything in the world. You need not confine it to a friend: That he which is, was wished until he were. You can make it “it” or “they” or anything else in the world. It is simply from the very beginning, the primal wish was simply to so give myself to a state that I lost myself in the state, and I remain in that state until the state became objectified within my world.
This is what the Bible is teaching everyone in this world. Your end is predetermined. You cannot fail. You cannot fail, because God has done it – the whole thing is done. You are going to awaken one day as God Himself, and no matter what you do in this world, you cannot fail. You may fail in your objectives in this world, but you cannot fail in God’s objective for Himself when He became us.
Now in Scripture as you are taught it by all the priests of the world – whether they be Catholics, Protestants, Christian Scientists or any other denomination, they all teach this: The Incarnation took place at Bethlehem. That’s what they teach. I will tell you, that is not true. The Incarnation took place at Calvary, and that was not two thousand years ago, that was in the very beginning of time. It was not at Bethlehem, but at Calvary when God became as we are, in the beginning of time. At Bethlehem we become as God is. There’s all the difference in the world.
So, the Cry on the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:24) – that is Calvary, the Cry on the Cross. God so completely became as we are – He’s not pretending that He’s a man. That’s incarnation. God incarnated Himself in humanity. His name is in us, and He is His Name; and His name is: I AM
But I am telling you, that name in a more living sense is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s God.
So, He incarnated Himself in humanity at Calvary. Calvary did not take place two thousand years ago, it took place “in the very beginning,” when God said: “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26); and then God became humanity – that’s Calvary – and buried Himself in the skull of humanity; that’s where He is, and that’s where He is dreaming the Dream of Life. He is dreaming everything in this world that you are experiencing.
The day will come; He will reach Bethlehem. When He reaches Bethlehem, then God-in-man is born and man becomes as God is – born, not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God. And no one can fail because it was done “before that the world was.” For, Divine Imagining does not wait. It imagines a state that is planned, instantly it is done. Now it is going to simply pay the price.
“And God paid the price.” He paid it by becoming humanity for His will was to “let us make man in our image.”
So, while we are here, we are told to be imitators of God “as dear children.” As God became as I am, that I may be as He is, while I am here waiting for that birth that is not born of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God – while I am here in the world of Caesar, let me imitate Him. Well, what is He doing? He actually became me, and forgot that He was God that He could cry out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” So, He’s not pretending, He actually became it.
I must now be like God; I want to be – and I name it. I’ve got to completely forget all that my reason and my senses dictate, that would tell me I am this, that and the other, and anchor me to it, and so completely abandon myself to what I want to be in the world of Caesar that I completely forget my past, and I live in that state.
So, a man is unemployed? Forget it. You say you are unemployed and the market is going down and there is a recession and you can’t find a job?
May I tell you, forget it. You will say, “What evidence have you to support it?” I have all the evidence in the world, because no one in this audience tonight has gone through greater poverty than the speaker. No one started behind the 8-ball more than I did. No one had, I would say, less education in my formative years – no social background, no intellectual background, no financial background; and my entire family found this Principle.
My father found it. My brother Victor found it, and then he shared it with the family; and today, here in the little island they are having all the disturbances that we have here.
To us, it’s a big scale because the island is small, and here we are two hundred-odd million people. We balloon things here. We make one crisis after the other. Why, I do not know, but we do it – to sell papers and to do all kinds of things. But when you are on a little island and they burn buildings and destroy property, and burn cane – which is destroying the yearly supply, and yet, in spite of it all, one holding a vision that it never fails, and he pays higher and higher and higher dividends.
I speak from experience because I am one of the recipients of those dividends. He doesn’t care what they are doing. He remains faithful to his vision.
His vision was that “I will be the biggest” – and when I say I, he meant the family would be, but he was the spokesman for the family – he had the vision – “in the entire area. Let them do what they will, I will be the biggest, the most powerful financial giant in the island.” Well, he is 68 now, he may depart tonight – I do not know, but his dream has come true.
“It has been taught us from the primal state that he which is, was wished until he were.”
But you can’t wish it, and then deviate and turn away. You must want to be, and so want to be it that you don’t turn to anything else.
So, when I go home and I talk to him, he says, “Neville – all right, thank you for your visions. You have visions, and I have another goal. My goal, as you call it, is the world of Caesar. I want the world of Caesar; and so when I depart this world, I am quite willing to have anyone who is in control give me another job, to go on and do it and succeed in the doing. But while I am here, I am going to do what you call ‘the things of Caesar.’ You do what you call ‘the works of God.’ I love you as my brother, and you can continue in your visions. But while I am here, I want to be, and I will be ” – and by the Law today he is, beyond all doubts and no one would question his position in the financial world in the Island of Barbados. And it doesn’t stop there; it goes into the other islands.
So he says, “Let them riot, let them burn, let them do what they want. I will not falter in my vision. And my vision, as I had it for myself when we had nothing – and I got tired of having nothing and having the family looked down upon,” so now they don’t look down upon them. They all come to them, including the government, and ask them what to do, because they have the know-how, because they have proven it – what to do.
So, everything in this world is possible. “All things are possible to him who believes.” The only condition imposed upon man is: Can you believe it when reason denies it and your senses deny it? No limitation is placed upon God, “With God, all things are possible” – no limitation. But God became man; and as man, He imposed upon Himself the limitation, and that limitation is belief. Can you believe it?
So, can you tonight believe that you are what at this moment everything denies? I don’t care what it is – can you believe it? Will you persist in that belief as though it were true, and walk tomorrow, though you haven’t a thing to eat, just as though it were true? And persist in it. You don’t have to raise a finger to steal anything in this world, or to do anything of which you would be ashamed. Just simply persist in the belief that you are the man – the woman – that you want to be. It will come to pass.
An assumption, though false,
if persisted in, will harden into fact.
This whole vast objective world was produced by imaginal activities. I don’t care what the world will tell you – there isn’t a thing you see now in the world that was not once only imagined. The clothes you wear, your haircut, the house in which we are now housed – everything was once only imagined. And then it was persisted in, and it became a reality.
But then, you will say, “But after all, people did do it.” I am not denying that. You don’t have to build it. You hold the vision. And those who will build it, they’ll build it, but you will own it. You will pay them their price – pay them fully. They, too, can transcend their present position if they desire to be beyond what they are, but they must first want to be. And when they want to be and they wish it, they will go back to that primal state:
“It was taught us from the primal state
that he which is, was wished until he were.”
So, you want to be – and you name it – I won’t tell you what to be. You name what you want to be. Now go beyond the things of Caesar. Would you like to be, beyond all things in the world, one who actually experienced the Gospel? That, too, is a wish. So, you can remain here forever building bigger and bigger and bigger things in the world.
One died last week or two weeks ago – his name was Richard Melon. He left an estate of three billion dollars-plus. He died at the age of 70. He undoubtedly was a very perfectly marvelous, wonderful man. He gave over seven hundred million dollars to charity, established this marvelous art museum in Washington and endowed it to keep it going indefinitely, So, he gave, and gave much. But he left an estate of over three hundred billion at the age of 70.
Man has done it. Man can do it. But I would have you wish to experience the Gospel – experience the story of Jesus Christ, because everyone is destined to experience it, but you must be so hungry for it that nothing can turn you from it.
When my brother who has made this money – and I share it because I am part of the family, when he wanted me to come home and wrote me the most enticing letter, to “call it a day” and come home and live graciously with a full complement of servants, a nice home, and everything, I wrote him back and said,
“Vic, you don’t understand. I have no desire for a home and a full complement of servants and all these things – I don’t. I want to do it here until I drop.” If I drop tonight on the platform, it’s perfectly all right with me, but I must tell what happened to me, because I can’t conceive of anything more exciting than that which has happened to me. For the world reads the story of Jesus Christ, and they think of a being who lived two thousand years ago, and that story must unfold itself in man individually.
Well, it has unfolded itself completely, one hundred per cent, in me. What on earth do I want with a home and a full complement of servants to vegetate for the remaining years of my life? I would rather, this night, as I stand before you, drop and have them pick the body up and cremate it. Don’t put it into any little crypt to make some little stupid icon of it. Cremate it and take the dust and scatter it all over so that no one can find any part of the dust – but no remains of it, because I am not talking about this outer garment [indicating the physical body] – this thing called “Neville.” I am speaking of an eternal Principle that embedded Itself in humanity and will raise Itself from the death that is called man. And when It rises out of man, it is God – the One who in the beginning said, “Let us make man in our image.”
And to make it, He had to completely forget that He was God, and assume the limitations of man and become man, and suffer with man, and go through all the things that is man, to awaken as the Being that He was before, but greater by reason of the experience of being man. He expands beyond what He was in Wisdom, in luminosity, in translucency, because He took the limit of contraction that is man. This is the purpose of it all.
So tonight, if you are unemployed or threatened, may I tell you, don’t despair.
If you can’t find a job, don’t despair. If you want to be happily married and there seems to be no one in this world, whether you be male or female – may I tell you, everyone is looking for the companion of his life or her life in this world. Assume that you have found him. Sleep as though it were true. Share it with your friends who have rejoiced with you, because it is true, and in a way that no one knows, out of the blue, she or he will come into your life, and it will be perfect.
I’m telling you from my own personal experience. That’s why I can stand before you and say what I do. No one was more involved than the speaker when I found one that I said, “I’ve got to have her,” but no one was more involved. And I simply slept as though it were true, and I can’t tell you in detail what happened. The most mysterious things happened to make it possible in my world.
It is almost embarrassing to talk about it from the platform. I have talked about it, and those who were present criticized me unmercifully for having told the story, but I didn’t tell it to brag. I told it to explain how the law works.
It works. You do not have to go out and devise the means to the end. Having assumed the end, the end will devise the means – a series of incidents across which you will move. You will move across some bridge of incidents leading from where you have assumed the state to the fulfillment of it, because you go to the end, dwelling in the end. Then some strange thing happens in the world, and this bridge appears. You walk across the bridge of incidents leading up to the end.
Here recently – when I say recently – 1949, one of our great scientists discovered a certain principle in physics, and these are his words, not my words, but long before he discovered it and told it in this strange way, I told him, to the criticism of those who heard what I was saying. They said, “The man is insane.”
I said, I can go in time into a state that is not yet realized, and I can live in that state as though it were true, and then I can return to this state that I have shut out for a moment, and then, in a way that I do not know, I move forward across a series of events leading up to the fulfillment of that state.
And a man in Milwaukee – he was the head of this chemical department of a huge, huge organization – Allis Chalmers. He was their great physicist, where they sent in all kinds of samples of water from all over the world for his analysis, to explain why they were getting sediment on the huge, big turbines that they were making. And so, he analyzed the water and then sent back his analysis of the water, because water picks up the little sediments across the land that it flows over. And so, if they bring certain things – well, it cakes within the thing, so he tries to explain why.
So, when I said what I have just told you, he said, “It can’t be done. We have a law in science, which we call entropy. Entropy is: “you cannot change the past; that the past is unalterable. Man is moving forward in time with an unalterable past.” I said,
“You can change the past. Man can revise the past and change it as though it never happened. The day will come, everyone is going to change the entire past, and simply revise it.”
He said, “It can’t be done. I am a scientist. I am the leader in my profession.”
Well, he was big enough to send me a copy of that which came out in the Science Bulletin about two months after I left Milwaukee, and this is what the scientists said – he had just been given the Nobel Prize for what he wrote in 1949. His name is Dr. Richard Feynman, now Professor of Physics at Cal-Tech. And in this magazine he wrote, months after I told the story in Milwaukee, and he said, discussing a little particle – an atomic particle known as a positron: He said,
“The positron starts from where it hasn’t been, and it moves to where it was a moment before; arriving there, it is bounced so hard, its time sense is reversed, and it moves back to where it hasn’t been.” Now that is Professor Feynman of Cal-Tech.
I said, I go forward in time to where I have not yet visited physically, and I simply enclose myself in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. I haven’t yet realized it physically, but I go forward in my mind’s eye, in my imagination, into the state, and I talk with my friends from the wish fulfilled as though it were true. Then I open my eyes and I am startled to find that I am sitting in a chair where I was a moment before. And what I have just done is denied by my senses, but strangely enough, the whole vast world reshuffles itself and forms a bridge of incidents, across which I move to the fulfillment of that state where I have been.
So, he said, “It starts from where it hasn’t been, and it moves to where it was an instant ago. Arriving there, it is bounced so hard that its time sense is reversed, and then it travels back to where it hasn’t been.”
Well, I knew that mystically. I am not a scientist. I could not explain it. The little positron does this as he described it back in 1949. And for that, last year he was given the Nobel Prize. They waited all these years to confirm it, and it has been confirmed now photographically in all the chambers that they could actually test, and the man was right. But I was right before that. But I had no little particle to prove it. I only know what I did.
I simply would put myself in a state, and I would see the world as I would see it if it were true. I looked, and I saw it, and my friends smiling with me because they were happy that I achieved what I said I would achieve. And so, they were smiling with me. And then I opened my eyes, and my friends aren’t present. I am back in my room, and it’s the same old room, the same limitations, the same everything.
But then, in a way I did not know, this little bridge of incidents was built, and I went forward to fulfill what I had done.
I went forward and I did what I wanted to do. And then I started from where I had not been physically and sped back to where I was physically; and then I was bounced – shocked – that it wasn’t true. I was bounced so hard that I then turned around in my time sense and moved back to fulfill where I had been in my imagination.
Now, the issue is October the 15th. It’s called the Science Letter. You can get it in the Library. It’s by Richard Feynman – October the 15th, 1949. And this happened to me in the month of May in the City of Milwaukee. And when it came out to him, because he subscribes to the Science Letter, he sent it to me, and I got it sometime around December of that year; but I said it to him back in May of that year. I didn’t get the Nobel Prize. They would have called me mad – completely mad.
May I tell you: “There are states of consciousness in which all visionary men are accounted mad men” [Blake, from “The Laocoon”]. And I’ve been accounted a mad man since a child, because I’ve been seeing things that I could not explain. I didn’t have the education to explain these things that I have seen, but I knew they worked. I only knew that it worked. I would try it, and it worked.
If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what the world thinks about it, if there is evidence for it? Well, I had the evidence for it, but I could not explain it scientifically. I only knew that it worked.
So, I tell you, all things are possible to him who believes, and that One is equal to God. Only the limitation is placed upon God-as-man, because “With God all things are possible,” without restriction. To imagine from the Divine Imagining state, it’s automatic – it’s done. But when God limits Himself to man and comes down to the limit of man, then He imposes upon Himself, called man, belief.
So, “Without faith,” we are told, “it is impossible to please Him; and he who would come to God must first believe that God exists, and He rewards those who seek Him.” Read it in the 11th chapter, the 6th verse, of Hebrews.
He rewards everyone who first believes that He exists. You must first believe He exists. Well, I’ll show you Who-He-is. He is your own wonderful human imagination. I cannot observe imagination as I do objects in space. I am the Reality that is named Imagination. How can I observe it? I can only observe my creations, I can’t observe my Self, the Creator.
I’ve produced one thing that reveals to me Who I Am, and that was the Son. He is the only being in the world who can really bring me to my Being and show me Who I Am. I am God the Father. I produce all these things in the world, and I can’t find my Self. I can’t observe my Self – Imagination, because I am the Reality that is named Imagination, although I am producing all these things in the world.
Like sudden fancies, they all pour out of me.
I don’t always recognize the harvest, but I can’t deny that I had to plant them in order to reap them. I planted everything in my world. It’s all coming home to harvest. So, I don’t recognize the Reality that I am, for it is unseen by mortal eyes, but I did create one state, and that was the Son, that would one day stand before me and call me “Father,” and then I would know Who I Am, And he is my son, and he calls God, and only God, “Father.” And his name is David.
When David stands before you and calls you “Father,” then, and only then, do you know Who-You-Are. That’s how completely you became humanity, that humanity may become you. And you, when you became humanity, were God, may I tell you?
Now, a lady wrote me this past week. She said she had two dreams two days apart. In one there was a huge auditorium filled with people and she instantly knew, as though it passed before her as a movie, what everyone would have to experience. She also knew that she had experienced what everyone would experience, and therefore would experience it no more.
Two days later she found herself in this enormous crowd – thousands and thousands of people, and there were thousands and thousands of white doves, and she knew without any doubt that the white doves would kill every one of them.
And she also knew she also had had that experience, that she had been killed, and she would be killed no more.
Now listen to these words in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “I, even I, am He, and there is no God beside me. I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39)
Yes, she has experienced Scripture in a glorious way. You say someone was killed? You have been killed. Someone was wounded. You have been wounded. All the things you read in that glorious Book – and it’s the most horrible book in the world if you take it as the world sees it – Talk of genocide – it’s there in the Old Testament. You have experienced it. And now you are in the New. And now you can have this memory returning. And she had the memory returning. She has experienced this death. She has experienced the horror of the past. She will not experience it anymore. She is on the verge of the awakening of the God-within-her
– the same God. There are not two gods. There is only one God.
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our god, the Lord is one.”
Only one body, one spirit, one lord, one god and Father of all. So, all are being brought back into the one Body, for only one body fell. And the one body, falling, fragmented itself into the unnumbered – what we call people, and that one body began to rise, for one rose and became the center of that magnet that draws back, and one after one after one is being called back into the one body, the one spirit, the one lord, the one God and Father of all.
But we are individualized, and, May I tell you, though you are that one body and that one spirit and that one lord and the God and Father of all, you will not lose your identity. You and I will rejoice in the end as the brothers who fell in the one body, enhanced by reason of the experience of this world of death.
Well, tonight, make it a practical night. I was moved to do it because over the last two weeks, I’ve had so many calls – calls from New York, calls from this and calls from the other – what am I going to do? Well, if they call me from these distant places, then the same thing must be taking place here. Don’t despair. Don’t accept what you read in the papers that there is a recession and you can’t find a job, or you are being demoted in salary and this, that and the other. Don’t do it.
Have a dream. Enter the dream, and keep these words of Shakespeare:
“It hath been taught us from the primal state that he which is, was wished until it were.”
You will find that in the First Act, the Fourth Scene, of “Anthony and Cleopatra.”
Now, you will say, “After all, Shakespeare wrote that.” Shakespeare had the vision. Don’t just say, “Shakespeare wrote it”; he had the vision. These are the words of Caesar who rose to the top.
So tonight, know what you want. No modification: just know what you want. Assume that you have it. See in your mind’s eye what you would see if it were true. Live in that state just as though it were true, and then go your way. Sleep tonight as though it were true. Wake tomorrow, and if the moment denies it, get back on the beam and continue on that beam. Do not turn to the left, nor the right. Keep these words. You keep them and simply live by them, and you cannot fail.
Now, let us enter the silence.
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