How can you take a man trained as he was trained and persuade him that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact? How could he possibly believe that? Yet I was the living evidence of what I had done.
IMAGINATION PLUS FAITH – Neville Goddard
This series is really a combination of both the Law and the Promise. Tonight, naturally, will be the Law, and yet some parts of the Promise may be woven into it. The title, as you know, is “Imagination Plus Faith.” So, we will have to define the words as we use them.
I firmly believe that:
“Man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us, and we in Him;” [Wm. Blake, from “Annotations to Berkeley’s ‘Siris’”]
“The Eternal Body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself” [Wm. Blake, from “Laocoon – The Angel of the Divine Promise”]
The Divine Body that we speak of as Jesus Christ. I firmly believe that this is the Christ of Scripture that is buried in man, buried in the only Holy Sepulcher that there ever was, and that is the skull of man. And there he dreams the Dream of Life, and one day He will awaken within your skull, and then the drama of Christ as defined for us in Scripture will unfold within you, casting you in the first-person-singular, present tense experience of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then you will know who He really is. You will actually awaken as the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the climax for everyone born of woman.
But tonight let us get back to what I mean by imagination and what I mean by faith. First of all, faith is defined for us in the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. It is called a hymn in praise of faith.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
By faith we understand a world was created by the Word of God, so that Things seen are made out of things that do not appear.” (Hebrews 11:3) That’s what we are told in the very first few verses of the 11th chapter of Hebrews.
Now, if faith is the evidence of things not seen and all things are made out of things that do not appear, then we must come to the conclusion that every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion of the fading memory. Man does not remember his imaginal acts, so when they come up and the harvest is ripe, he denies his own harvest. He cannot see where on earth what he is now experiencing could have been caused by him, because he has forgotten his imaginal acts. That is when he sowed it, and all things bring forth after their kind. Let no one be deceived, for God – which is his own imagination – is not mocked. As a man sows, so shall he reap.” (Galatians 6:7) So, I am forever reaping what I have planted, but because of my fading memory, I can’t remember when I did it. So, then, I deny what I am seeing as my own harvest.
Well, now, who is this God spoken of in this verse? He said,
“By faith we understand that the world was created by the Word of God.” (Hebrews 11:3)
Well, we are told in Scripture in the very first few verses of the book of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Then we are told,
“The Word was made flesh and dwelt within us;” (John 1:14)
Therefore the Word spoken of here is equated with God. If the Word was not only with God, it was God, well, then, that’s God, and it now dwells in us.
Well, I tell you, this Word that dwells in you, spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ, is your own wonderful human imagination. This is the greatest secret in the world, and everyone should strive after solving it. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lies in the solution of this mystery.
So, as far as I am concerned, the God who created it all and sustains it all is pure imagining in myself. He works in the very depths of my soul, underlying all my faculties, including perception; but He streams into my surface life least disguised in the form of productive fancy, like a daydream.
A daydream is productive; a daydream is creative. I am planting when I daydream. I don’t have to be intense to drop a seed. I don’t have to go around and dig a hole and bury it. I can scatter it. So, a daydream is planting. So, I sit down and wonder, “Am I doing it lovingly?” I do not always check myself.
I may read the morning paper and then react on a story that I do not know whether it is true or false, but I react. Well, It knows exactly what I did, and It is my own imagination. It keeps the score, and so in time the harvest will come up, and I will see it. So, all objective reality is solely produced through imagining.
So, I say, imagining plus faith – I must actually believe in the imaginal act. Now, how do I go about doing it? That’s the important thing.
I am told by one scholar that if ordinary things that I observe in this corporeal world – if they are present, that is sense, if absent, that is imagination.
The room around me seems to me more real than anything in the world because it is present. Yet I stand – I am not familiar with this room save once a year that I come for ten nights. I am far more familiar with the home that I have in Los Angeles, but at the moment it is not present to my senses, so I am told that is only an imagination.
That is simply a memory image of what may be still a reality, but at the moment it could be gone. Yet I do not think it’s gone, so they tell me. All right, if I think of it but it is not present, then that is imagination. But if things are present, then that is sense.
Well, how do I make what is not present real? That is where we come to imagining plus faith. I have tried it unnumbered times, and may I tell you, it works. I could stand here and take a case history.
Years ago, right after the Second World War – the year was 1945, I sailed with my little family, my wife and daughter out to the Island of Barbados. I hadn’t seen the family through the war years, because there was no transportation available. I was in the Army for a very short span of time, about four months. Because of my age plus this law, I was honorably discharged because I was over 38. My son was in the Marines in Guadalcanal, but my little girl was only a matter of months in age.
So, at the end of 1945 I sailed, on the first ship out, for there were no planes taking any one to the Indies. So, I sailed with my wife and my little girl on a one-way ticket, not thinking for one moment of the difficulty in getting back to New York, and I had a commitment to be in Milwaukee in the first week of May. So, I sailed the end of December – New Year’s Eve, to be exact. At the end of about three months, my brother Victor said to me, “You have a return ticket?” and I said, “No, but I want to get back the first week of May to go to Milwaukee.” He said, “How dare you leave the capital of the financial world, New York City, without making arrangements?
All things are done there, and you have come to a little island like Barbados, and we have two little ships – one carrying a maximum of 65 passengers, and the other carrying a maximum of 120, one sailing out of Boston, one sailing out of New York, but all these islands are to be serviced, and we alone could use more ships several times a month. They only make a round trip – one makes it every 21 days, and the other one makes it every 32 days; and how dare you come out, knowing you must be back, without making any arrangement in New York City?”
Well, it was perfectly all right. I sat in my hotel room in a nice big easy chair, and I assumed it was a little boat that would tend the ship because we didn’t have a deep harbor in those days. We have one now, but there was no deep-water harbor, so I assumed that I was on a small little boat taking me out to the ship, and that my brother Victor and sister Daphne, my wife and other members of the family and little Vicki were all aboard the boat.
Then I assumed that I was stepping off this little boat onto the gangplank. I could feel the rhythm; I could feel it give as I went up step after step after step. My mind wandered before I got to the top. So, I came back to the bottom again and started all over. It wandered again; I came back to the bottom and did it over.
When I got to the top, I had no room where I could go. I simply assumed now: My hand is on the rail. I could feel the salt of the sea on the rail. I could feel the salt of the sea in the air, and then I looked towards the Island of Barbados with a mixed feeling: one of sadness because I was leaving the family, and one of joy because I was going back to America where I live. That was a peculiar feeling, but it was a natural feeling.
And while I had hold of the rail and assumed this state, I then fell asleep in the chair.
Now, I must go back. When I went down to the firm in Barbados to ask for transportation, they said, “You haven’t the chance of a snowball in hell of getting out of Barbados until October.” This was then the month of late March. Not a chance of getting out. They had a list that long and I was at the bottom of the list. Trinidad had a list that much longer, for they had so many more people. All the islands have lists. There were literally thousands of people waiting to get aboard, and they only had two ships, one carrying 65 and one carrying 120 passengers. So, they said, “Mr. Goddard, you have no chance of getting out before October.” I said, “All right.”
Then I sat and did that which would imply that I was sailing. I simply did exactly what I knew I had to do. I simply subjectively appropriated my objective hope. I hoped to be sailing on that ship, and so I subjectively appropriated the objective hope, for if I were sailing, I would get into that little boat, get off onto the gangplank and walk up to the deck of the ship.
The next day – the very next day – I had not dressed; I had not a thing to do but go to the bathing beach later on in the day. The phone rang, and it was the Alcoa Steamship Company asking me to come on down, that they had news for me. I asked them what news. They said we have passage for three sailing on the next ship, which will put you back in New York City on the 1st of May.
I went down, and I was very curious and asked, “Why do you offer it to me when the list, you told me, is so long, with hundreds and hundreds waiting on it who are all ahead of me? And what caused you to have the vacancy?”
Well, a lady in the island, so she told me, who desired to get out badly and wanted to go back to America – the first choice would be this lady. Well, suddenly she changed her feeling about it. Then they went down the entire list with no reason whatsoever and gave it to us, and they justified it in this manner:
“The ship only carries two in each room, but your little girl is only about three years of age, and she can sleep in a bunk with your wife, and you can have the other one. So, because she is such a little child – only three years old, we gave it to accommodate three rather than two, and the two that we do have couldn’t share it anyway because they are different sexes and not married.”
That is how she justified giving it to me when hundreds of people were before me. I know how I did it. Every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion. Well, I remembered what I did. It was only a matter of 24 hours between planting that seed and the springing of that seed into objective reality. By the 20th day of April I was on that boat, getting off in New York City by May the 1st to meet my appointment in Milwaukee.
I could multiply that by dozens and dozens in my own case, and unnumbered in those who attend my meetings. So, it is simply imagination plus faith. As we are told, without faith it is impossible to please Him. The one we please is not some external being; it is internal – your own wonderful imagination.
Now, I will put you to the test. We are told in the 13th chapter of II Corinthians: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? – Unless indeed you fail to meet the test.” (II Corinthians 13:5)
Now I just gave you the test. This is the test:
If the word “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus Christ” conveys the sense of an existent something outside of man, you have failed the test, for Jesus Christ is in you. He said, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? – Unless indeed you fail to meet the test.” (II Corinthians 13:5) If the word
“Jesus Christ” conveys the existence of someone outside of you, you didn’t meet the test. And all things are done by Him. “Without Him was not anything made that is made.” (John 1:3) And He is your own wonderful human imagination.
So, here, when you know to Whom you pray and Who is actually doing it, you’ll find that it is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God.
“All things exist in the human imagination” [Wm. Blake from “Jerusalem”].
There isn’t a thing in this world that you and I call real – objectively real – that was not first only imagined. You name it.
The building in which we now are seated, everything here, the lectern, the clothes you wear, name anything here. You may go into other parts like the trees. We didn’t make those by imagination, but it was the Divine Imagination, the same as the human imagination, only we are keyed low. It is the same imagination, for there is only God.
So, human imagination is one with Divine Imagination. On our level, God keyed Himself low with the weaknesses and the limitations of the body, God [literally] became as we are, that we may be as He is.” [Wm. Blake, “There Is No Natural Religion”]
In becoming man, He couldn’t pretend He was man. He had to actually become man, with all the weaknesses, with all the limitations and frailties of man, and assumed it completely.
Then, in time, the whole thing unfolds within man, and man discovers that he is God. He discovers he is God because the drama is completely recorded for him. Everything said of Jesus Christ in Scripture, you are going to experience as something taking place within you.
Not something of which you read as in the case of reading about another, no, it is all done within you. You stand dumbfounded. You are amazed beyond measure and belief. You cannot believe it, that you still capable of – well, of unlovely actions, could be that glorified. Yet you can’t deny the evidence of your senses. You cannot deny the experiences that you’ve had. And the whole thing will unfold in you. You will know from experience. I am not theorizing. I am not speculating.
No one taught it to me. I never read it in a book – in the Bible, but I never saw it in the Bible until I had experienced it, and then I went back and researched the Scriptures to find it is all there, but adumbrated. It was not spelled out in a way that man could understand it. The whole thing was an adumbration from beginning to end; and when it takes place in man, and the man in whom it takes place tells it, those who hear him can’t believe it because they know him. They know his past. They know his background in every little detail, and they cannot believe their traditional concept of Jesus Christ to be what he is talking about that actually unfolded within him.
The Bible tells the same story: “He came to his own, and his own received him not,” (John 1:11) because really, in the end, there is only the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only God. God is buried in every being in the world, and only God will rise. And He will rise in the individual, and the individual in whom He rises, that one will know Who He is. And he will be the God of Scripture. That is the story.
But tonight, on the practical level you try it, knowing Who is doing it: that it is God doing it, and God is your own wonderful human imagination.
Now, take faith, as defined for us in the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews, and you will see that it is simply the subjective appropriation of the objective hope.
I wanted to be on that ship; that was my objective hope. Well, I first subjectively appropriated it. I did it as though it were true. I actually acted just as though the thing had happened. I walked up the gangplank, held the rail, looked back with mixed feelings, and then fell asleep. And when I found myself wandering, I went back to the very first step on the gangplank and did it over again, and went on doing it over and over until I could walk right up that gangplank and actually feel I am at the very top and turn around and put my hand on the rail.
And strangely enough, in my imagination I allowed my brother Victor to carry my daughter Victoria up the gangplank, and to justify his action when we got off the little tender onto the gangplank, he said, “Come, your father’s arms aren’t strong enough to take you. I will take you.” But my arms certainly were strong enough to carry my daughter, but he had to justify it, as we all do. He had to justify that action, and then took her up. Well, that is exactly what he did when we got to the little boat.
So, here, I ask you just to listen to it and not say, Well, I’ve heard it, and forget it, but try it. You will be the operant power. It doesn’t work itself. We are the operant power. In fact, all day long we are operating it, but I would ask everyone to operate it wisely, nobly, consciously, and not go into a fantasy wildly that tomorrow, when it comes up, we will not forget the harvest. For everything in our world, man once imagined. And all the men of action in our world that you see out building the buildings and doing all the business – they are nothing more than the unconscious instruments of imaginative men.
A man sits down at the drafting board, and he has conceived a building. He does everything in detail all in his imagination, and then he turns the blueprint over to the men of action, and they get all the credit, but the man who did it was simply the man of imagination.
That is what William Butler Yeats meant. Having seen this law in operation, he said:
“I will never again be certain that it was not some woman treading in the winepress that started that sudden change in men’s minds.”
And because of it, so many nations were given to the sword because of some dream in the mind of some shepherd boy that lighted up his eyes for a moment before it went upon its way.
Someone feeling herself neglected and wrongfully accused, and she is vivid in her imagination, when she, unknown by the world, is setting the world aflame. Many a man tonight is in jail, and wrongfully there; he knows he did not commit the crime for which he was charged, and he is paying a price that he feels he should not pay. That man’s mind is inflamed, and what is he doing? It is going undetected, but the events will appear in the world.
Two or three weeks ago I received a letter, and I thought it was a strange letter when I began to read it. It is from a prisoner. I do not know the man at all. He signed his name “Bob,” and enclosed a self-addressed envelope. He is at Folsom. Folsom is a place where only the hardened prisoners are sent. Well, he confessed that he heard me on TV, and he practiced it and it worked.
Well, I had twenty TV appearances on Sunday afternoons between 2:00 and 2:30. He said he applied it, and he said, “Neville, and it worked. Where I am going, I don’t know, but I am here for quite a stretch, and so it doesn’t matter whether you answer tonight, tomorrow or when you answer, because I am here. But I would like certain questions answered.”
That fellow is interested in the use of imagination. Strangely enough, they are vitally interested in the mystery of death. They would like to know if I can cast any thought whatsoever on death, based upon – naturally – my experiences; not things concerning others, but what I know concerning death.
Well, I wrote him just before I came up. By now he must have the letter. I wish I could go to Folsom and talk to the inmates and tell them of their true dignity – the Man that they are destined to be, for they are destined to be the Lord Jesus Christ. Every child born of woman is destined to be Christ, and to be conscious of the fact that he is the Lord. But how to get there and address them, I do not know. He has my letter. I wrote him in detail as much as I possibly could, and he will share it with those who are interested. They are vitally interested in death.
I told him, as I would tell anyone, I meet people who are not aware of the fact that they have made the transition. They know nothing of the fact that they have died, because they aren’t dead. They are not dead, and nobody can persuade them that they died. They are talking to a man who is just as alive as you are, and you tell him that he died and you went to his funeral and you know exactly where they put him in the ground, revealing what he would expect of you as a friend, but he laughs at you, because he knows he isn’t dead. I say, “No, you are not dead, but you died, you know.” “But aren’t you stupid,” he said to me – “I am not dead but I died.”
You see, there is all the difference in the world between restoration, which happens to everyone who dies here – instantaneous restoration in an unaccountable way in a new body – like it was before, but new – unaccountably new, and young. If you die at 90, you are 20, and it is an instantaneous restoration. Well, that is not Resurrection.
Resurrection is the story that I tell when man actually awakens from the dream of life, while the other is restored to continue the dream. He is dreaming the conditions round about him, as he is dreaming the conditions here.
What was it but a waking, controlled dream that I did when I went aboard the ship? When I got out of the Army, was that not a dream, a waking but controlled dream? When I put in my application for an honorable discharge, it was denied me and signed Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr. He was my Commanding Officer in the 11th Armored Division.” There was no appeal beyond my commander. I could not take it to the regimental commander or division commander; I could only take it to my battalion commander, and he was my commander.
And he signed it “Disapproved.” That night I went to sleep in my little bunk with all the other soldiers and assumed that I was in New York City in my own apartment in Times Square, where I had my apartment. I was in my own bed my wife was in her bed, and our little girl was in her crib. And then I got up – all in my imagination – and walked through my apartment and felt the familiar objects. I could see them all. I could see them in my mind’s eye. And I made it quite clear to myself that I was not there on furlough; I was honorably discharged and sleeping now as a civilian.
That same night before my vision about 4:00 in the morning came a huge white sheet, and here on the white sheet was the word “Disapproved,” signed Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr. Then came a hand – just a hand with a pen in it, and the pen scratched out the word “Disapproved,” and in bold script it wrote, “Approved.” Then a voice spoke, and the voice said to me, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.”
Nine days later the commanding officer, Colonel Bilbough, called me in, and after giving me a lecture about the best-dressed man in America is the man who wears the uniform of America – I said, “Yes, Sir.” Then he goes on, and I said, “Yes, Sir,” “Yes, Sir,” “Yes, Sir.” At the very end of it he said, “I have decided I am going to let you go,” and then he signed my release. That very day I was out of the Army honorably discharged. I didn’t tell him what I did. Would he have believed it? For geared as he was to war, sending millions of us into battle, could he believe that the imagination could bring about peace?
How can you take a man trained as he was trained and persuade him that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact? How could he possibly believe that? Yet I was the living evidence of what I had done. If I had told him what I had done, he would never believe that that was the cause of the physical phenomenon leading to the train and then the journey to New York City.
That is exactly what I did in the vision of that night, just as I have told you. The sheet with his name and the word “Disapproved”; and then comes the hand striking out the word “Disapproved,” and it wrote in bold script “Approved.” And then this voice coming from the depths said, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.” I did nothing, and then nine days later he calls me in, approves it, shakes my hand, and he said to me, “Goddard, I will meet you in New York City after we have won this war.” I said, “Yes, Sir.” And that was it. No argument. I knew the causation behind it all, and I didn’t feel that that was the right time to share it with him.
He was not in the mood to share what I had discovered. Well, I had discovered it, and I applied it. Why not apply the truth if you think you have found the truth? And so I found it, I used it, and it worked. When something proves itself in performance, what does it matter if the whole vast world rises up in opposition to it? It proves itself in the testing.
So, I am sharing with you that which I have proved. But it doesn’t work itself. You are the operant power. So, you take it home and know exactly who God is. Are we not told in the 4th Psalm:
“Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be silent.” (Psalm 4:4)
Not with someone else’s heart – commune with your own heart. The words “heart” and “mind” are synonymous in meaning. Commune with your own mind, and trust that Mind; trust it implicitly. Believe in the reality of your imagined acts, and these imaginal acts will objectify themselves and become what the world calls objective facts. They will.
So, if you start behind the eight-ball, or behind anything that seems to be in opposition or an impassable something – well, you believe in God. I am telling you Who He is. Believe in the true God. Test yourself and see if you really believe in the true God.
I am convinced that ninety-nine percent of the world will claim to believe in God, but they believe in a false god. They stick him on the wall, made by human hands, and cross themselves. He isn’t there at all. Read the 115th Psalm. What a shocker. What a shocker when you see what man does with his own hands and worships that which he makes with his own hands and calls it God. He has no eyes that can see, no ears that can hear. He has eyes, he has ears, he has nostrils, he has arms, he has feet, but none of these things can move. The eyes can’t see, the ears can’t hear, the mouth can’t speak, the feet can’t move, and yet he looks upon it as God.
The 115th Psalm is the most marvelous thing to read. It is a shocker. And then, come back to find the real God, the living God, the God that cannot die – the God that is in you, your Immortal Self. That God cannot die. And that is your own wonderful human imagination. And should you drop now, you would be instantly restored in a body just the same, only new, unaccountably new and young – not an infant, not born again, just new. How it happens, I cannot tell you. I only know I’ve seen them, and they do not know – the majority of them do not know that they have made the transition into a section of time best suited for the work still to be done in them.
So, it does not mean that because you drop in the year 1971 that you are going to find the year ’71 now. No. You could find yourself in the Year One Thousand or the Year Three Thousand, but that is irrelevant. The section of time into which you are placed is done by the depths of your own being. He knows best what you need for the work: that He has started within you, and He is slowly breaking down the wall of partition between two until they become one. He is rubbing out that wall between you and Himself; when it is completely rubbed out, you are one. It is essential that He leaves all and cleaves to his wife to become one, not two. You are His wife till the sleep of death is passed.
So, this is God’s emanation, and then, in time, He rubs out that little division and He becomes one with you. And when He becomes one with you, He awakes, and you aren’t two – you are one. And it is all spelled out for us in Scripture, and as we go through this series, the nine that follow tonight, we will try to explain it, using the Scripture to support my experiences. It is clearly stated, but I must confess I did not see it. I did not know it. I knew nothing of the Promise, even though it is right there in the Bible, speaking of promises, until it happened right here in this City twelve years ago tomorrow, on the 20th of July 1959.
It happened right here in this City at that hotel called Sir Francis Drake.
I had retired after a very pleasant meal with a friend of mine. I retired early. And then at 4:00 in the morning the whole drama unfolded within me. Then the whole series took twelve hundred and sixty days to complete, just as foretold in the 12th chapter of Daniel, and then reaffirmed in Revelation (Daniel 12:7; Revelation 11:3) one thousand two hundred and sixty days from the first great event to the fourth and final one.
I have recorded it all, and you have it in the book called “Resurrection.”
Now, tonight, let us make it a full and interesting evening. After the Silence we will have your questions, and I will try my best to answer every question that is asked. Now, let us go into the Silence.
Audience Questions
[Inaudible Question by woman in audience]
Neville: If I dropped tonight after 66 years of acquiring experiences and it is not a part of me.
Woman: But I mean, the conscious mind?
Neville: Certainly, my dear. But you live there just as you live here; and people are afraid of dying there just as they are here, because they die there, as told in the 20th chapter of the book of Luke. It is stated so clearly, but man doesn’t see it. There we have what is known as the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Well, in modern language the Sadducees would be the extreme disbelievers, scientifically trained, intelligent, but with no belief in survival, believing that the brain is the whole thing, not the instrument. They believe the brain is the reality itself; they cannot believe that the brain is not the whole, when others believe the brain is only the instrument and the “player” is unseen who plays that instrument. Well, the Sadducees thought they would trick the central character of Scripture, and they asked the questions “Master, Moses once said that if a man marries and dies with no offspring and he has brothers, the second brother should marry his widow and raise up seed for his brother.” (See Luke 20:27 and following) Well, there were seven brothers. The first died leaving no offspring, the second ditto – died leaving no offspring; the third ditto, leaving no offspring. Eventually all married her and all died, and eventually she died. “Now whose wife is she in the Resurrection?”
His answer is this: “In this age the sons of God marry and are given in marriages but those accounted worthy to attain that age and the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more. They are now sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” (Luke 20:35, 36)
So, if you cannot die any more – if they are not resurrected, they die as they die here. You cannot accomplish in threescore and ten years what is going to take six thousand years.
Woman: I think you stated that before the Resurrection.
Neville: Before the Resurrection everything dies. In this world, it is a world of death. Actually, that is the question that this man from Folsom asked, and I could not answer him as I wanted to, because had I answered him, he would have thrown the letter out. If I had said to him that I have seen this world dead – that everything stood still; time stood still. You have the power within you, and one day you will exercise it. You will arrest it in you, not in the world. You will release something that you feel within your own skull, and you will make it stand still, and when it is arrested, the whole vast world stands still, and it will look as though everyone were dead. Every being that one second before was so animated and so alive is now dead. It is just as though it is made of clay or marble, and you look at it and you are amazed. Then you release within you the activity that you froze, and everything continues on its course.
The bird that stopped in space – well, the bird should fall, shouldn’t it? Suddenly a bird is arrested. It did not fall because of gravity. If the waitress is coming through and I arrest within me her activity, she wouldn’t fall. She was in motion, and she simply stands still supported by the earth or the floor. But a bird in flight, that bird certainly should continue to fall because I arrested its motion. It didn’t fall. The bird stood still in space, and she stood still, and the diners dining – everything stood still. As I released within me the activity that I had arrested, everything continued to fulfill its purpose.
Now, I could have changed their motivation and then released it. They would have changed their attitude towards life, and they would have thought that they had originated it. That is the power that is actually destined for everyone on the globe, and you will know that it is from above. And from above, the whole world is completely controlled. He said, “I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” He is explaining an entirely different age.
So, this world belongs to the world of death. Everything appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it disappears. Even the sun is going to go or slowly melt – so I am told. I am no scientist.
I was telling a friend of mine before I started the meeting; I have more friends on the other side of the veil than on this side. At my age I should. They all look alive here. I start counting those that have disappeared, and they are all over there, and they are still living just as they lived here – reanimated in a body that is young – unaccountably young, and many of them do not know of the transition. They just don’t know it.
Woman: Do they know you?
Neville: They know me, and yet they do not know of the transition. I can give you a story right here in this State. My secretary died suddenly at the age of 50. He was like my brother. He was my secretary, my friend, my brother. Jack Butler was his name. I got a cable saying they had found the body on the floor. He died of a massive heart attack. So, I went back and took care of the funeral. His sister insisted on a Catholic funeral because he was born a Catholic. He wasn’t a practicing Catholic, but she insisted, so I paid the expenses but she was the sister and I allowed that to take hold.
It was at Haverstrom, New York. We got the priest; we got the plot of land in a Catholic cemetery so all things were in order. My sister-in-law, my wife’s older sister, did not believe in what I teach, although she considers herself a pillar of the Episcopal Church. And I said to her, “What is it that you do not believe?” She said, “I do not believe in immortality. I believe that immortality is simply the descendants moving on and carrying on.” I said, “How can you be a Christian, and you do not believe in immortality or life everlasting? I can’t see, Al, where you could be a Christian – not in my sense of the word.”
Well, she still did not believe it. She said, “You are kind to my sister. You are a good husband and a good father, but I do not believe in your teaching.”
Six months after Jack died, I found myself conscious in what they call “that world,” fully conscious as I am now, and here was my sister-in-law, Al, and here is Jack. She said to me – she opened the conversation – she said, “I still don’t believe what you teach.” That is how she opened up the conversation.
I said to her, “How can you say that and look at Jack?” She said, “What has Jack to do with it?”
I said, “Don’t you know Jack died?” Well, she did. She remembered that he had died. She knew I came back from California to take care of the funeral, and so she remembered and her face changed completely, because Jack had died and she remembered that.
Then Jack said to me “Who is dead?”
I said, “Jack, you are not dead, but you died, you know.” “Oh, how stupid. I’m not dead, but I died.”
I said, “Yes, you died. I gave you a nice, homey funeral in sacred ground with a priest and all the things he is supposed to do.” And he looked at me so disgustedly. Then I said to Jack, “Jack, come over here.” He did; he obeyed me. He came over, and I turned to my sister-in-law and said, “Watch this.” I put my hand on his thigh, and I squeezed it, and it was solidly real just as flesh and blood. He looked at me and did exactly what he would have done here and said, “Take your hand off me.” just like that as I squeezed his thigh. And at that, she was flabbergasted, and everything dissolved, and I am back on my bed.
That is my experience with Jack. He doesn’t know he is dead, because he isn’t. He didn’t die. He died only to those who could not follow him. He lost contact. But the world doesn’t cease to be at the point where my senses cease to register it.
Woman: I believe firmly in life after death, but I thought, you know – if there was a carrying on of the understanding.
Neville: They are just as busy making a dollar as we are here. And there is no transforming power in death. A man who was a thief here finds himself still desirous of taking the goods of others. The one who is kind and considerate here, he is kind and considerate there. When I quoted from the 20th chapter of the book of Luke, the word worthy – I’ve been questioned time and time on that word worthy. But all Bibles translate it worthy; it is worthy. By definition, it means to seem entirely deserving. Well, in the eyes of whom? In the eyes of the one who is raised? No. In the eyes of those who behold. Those who await Eternity contemplate death. Those who are the resurrected in the eyes of their brotherhood – that one seemed worthy, entirely deserving, of being awakened from his dream. He has dreamed horrible dreams and beautiful dreams, and he has gone through the mill; it is time now to awaken him from the dream. He is worthy. His experiences are over when he takes off the body for the last time.
Any other questions, please?
Man: You said something about your television shows. I am not familiar with them.
Neville: I had 26 in L.A. on Channel 11. There were thirteen, and then I had a break for about three months, and they brought me back for another thirteen. There were 26 half-hour shows; I did just what I am doing now. They gave me a lectern, and I simply sat at a desk really and spoke extemporaneously. There was no cue to bring me in. When they started the camera, I was seated at the desk. I didn’t have to walk off the stage; I didn’t have to come on the stage. There was no director. I was simply seated at the desk, and then the camera simply moved in on me, and then at the end of what I had to say it just faded and went to the one to follow me. I had enormous mail on it. It was a tremendous success as far as what I do, but they couldn’t use it to sell perfume. I was told that I had an audience in excess of about three hundred thousand every Sunday afternoon between 2:00 and 2:30. That is what I was told by the survey; they estimate so many who view. In those days it was not done on tape; it was all done live. In those days everything was live for TV. The tapes came in after my days so those things are just a memory now.
Man: It was a number of years ago?
Neville: Oh, yes. Now I only appear on an occasional panel, and that is fun if they let you go completely out and tell them what you know from experience, that is fun, especially when you get a very critical bunch around you who try to dethrone you or make fun. Most of my critics are those who are only speaking from theory, not from experience.
2nd Woman: …someone who has written about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. And contrary to what you say, he talks about evolving, but from what you say, I imply it is really like a dream.
Neville: As far as I am concerned, he could mean something entirely different than I would if I used the word evolved. I do not accept evolving. I believe that God actually became as I am, and God will awaken in me, and when He awakes, I am He. But now, if the book you refer to is by Nicoll, I recommend Nicoll as a great thinker. Dr. Nicoll was a great thinker and a perfectly marvelous person. He is gone now from this sphere, as Gurdjieff is gone, and all the others are gone. Ouspensky is gone. But they used a different terminology. I do not teach what some of them do, which is reincarnation for one. No, to me, man is individualized and attains forever towards ever greater and greater individualization. I firmly believe that the true Temple of God is the individuality of man, made clearer by the indwelling of Jesus Christ. The only sepulcher in which He was ever buried is the skull of man.
He actually indwells man, and one day He will awaken in man. And when He awakens in that man, that man will know he is the Lord Jesus Christ. But He will awaken in every man. He took upon Himself Humanity, so that killing man is killing God. People don’t see it. Hurting man is hurting God. He is suffering all the ills that man suffers, but everything.
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