In this lecture, Neville Goddard presents the idea that God acts solely through human imagination, making each person the divine actor in their own reality. He illustrates this by recounting a dreamer’s ability to become any being or object she observed, demonstrating how imagination reveals three-dimensional realms. Drawing on Aldous Huxley’s portrait of D. H. Lawrence and quotations from William Blake, Goddard shows that experiences of good and evil are necessary states through which the soul must pass to awaken to its divine nature. He shares personal anecdotes of opening the ‘eye of imagination,’ including a nocturnal vision that recovered his baptismal certificate, as proof that imagination answers all desires. Emphasizing that everything exists here and now in eternity, he urges listeners to assume their desired state with faith, for what is imagined will inevitably come to pass.
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 a kind of adventure, a voyage of discovery into newness and otherness. For, being himself of a different order, he inhabited a different universe from that of common men—a brighter and intenser world, of which, while he spoke, he would make you free. He looked at things with the eyes, so it seemed, of a man who had been at thebrink of death and to whom, as he emerges from the darkness, the world reveals itself as unfathomably beautiful and mysterious. For Lawrence, existence was one continuous convalescence; it was as though he were newly reborn from a mortal illness every day of his life. What these convalescent eyes saw, his most casual speech would reveal. A walk with him in the country was a walk through that marvelously rich and significant landscape which is at once the background and the principal personage of all his novels. He seemed to know, by personal experience, what it was like to be a tree or a daisy or a breaking wave or even the mysterious moon itself. He could get inside the skin of an animal and tell you in the most convincing detail how it felt and how, dimly, inhumanly, it thought.
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 & 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 three-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 Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination, approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought; if he could Enter into Noah’s Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder, which always entreats him to leave mortal things as he must know, then would he arise from his Grave, then would he meet the Lord in the Air, & then he would 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 three-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 three-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 garmentis. 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.
Now let us go into the silence.
First, Neville Goddard reconceptualizes the nature of God, postulating that the divine is not an external entity but the human imagination itself. This pantheistic view dissolves the boundary between creator and creation, inviting practitioners to recognize their own mind as the source of all reality.
Second, by invoking Aldous Huxley’s reflections on D. H. Lawrence and Blake’s mystic poetry, Goddard situates his teaching within a lineage of literary and esoteric thought. These authoritative references lend cultural and scriptural weight to his assertions about imagination’s transformative power.
Third, the lecture provides a pragmatic framework for applied mysticism: consciously entering mental images and treating them as three-dimensional realities. Goddard’s vivid personal accounts—visual explorations from a chair or bed—offer a replicable method for meditators to test and validate their creative power.
Fourth, his recovery of a decades-old baptismal certificate through a nocturnal suggestion serves as a striking demonstration of imagination’s direct correspondence with material events. This anecdote bridges theory and lived experience, reinforcing the promise that every heartfelt desire can be fulfilled.
Finally, Goddard expands the implications of his teaching to a universal scale: all experiences of good and evil are states assumed to refine the soul, and sustained imaginative faith leads to ultimate awakening as Divine Imagination itself. His closing exhortation to assume one’s desired identity underscores the lecture’s core message: God is acting in us now through our own imaginal power.
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