Neville Goddard opens by defining faith as loyalty to unseen reality rather than wishful thinking, citing Hebrews 11:1 and John 14:1-3. He asserts that creation is already complete and that human imagination is the divine creative faculty through which unseen states become manifest. Through vivid personal experiments—mentally traveling to Barbados, reversing a destructive illness, and engaging unseen acts—he illustrates how sustained mental assumptions yield physical confirmations. He parallels mystical insight with Feynman’s positron theory to suggest time and causality are non-linear and prearranged. Goddard introduces the concept of a “bridge of incidents,” whereby external events realign to support one’s inner convictions. Ultimately, he presents a universal theology in which every individual, by mastering imagination and faith, partakes in divine creative power and overcomes mortal limitation.
The Bible defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, Revised Standard Version)
What is seen is made out of things that do not appear. Faith does not give reality to things that are not seen. It is loyalty to reality that makes things appear. Can I see the facts the world sees and still believe in the unseen state? If I can remain loyal to the unseen state, in some way I will get confirmation of it.
John 14:1-3: “ … ye believe in God, believe also in me. “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” This is not Jesus Christ talking to a disciple on the outside; it is I talking to myself. If all things are made by God, and without Him is not anything made that is made (John 1:3), then where is God? In my Imagination!
You aren’t called upon to make the things. All things already are. The whole, vast creation is already finished; I am only becoming aware of it. Any state that I can imagine can be occupied. The whole thing is finished, and all I do is adjust to it and “feel” myself there until it becomes natural.
You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to the unseen reality that gives it objectivity. You can revise the past.
We – you and I – are here, born by the Grace of God, and yet we dare to put a limit on the power of God. Our “sin” is our doubt of God.
“Some men see things as they are and say: Why? I dream things that never were and say: Why not? (George Bernard Shaw). Sen. Ted Kennedy used this quotation in his eulogy of Sen. RobertF. Kennedy without giving credit to the author, however Sen. R. F. Kennedy was known to quote it many times, giving credit to G. B. S. I know that I must be whatever I am in Imagination. So don’t treat this principle lightly. You truly move yourself into states mentally, wittingly or unwittingly.
A bridge of incidents will develop, over which you will pass until the [state is fulfilled] like pure imagining in us, and that He works in the very depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception; but He streams into the surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy, like a daydream – just a simple daydream.
I think of some one who is maybe a thousand miles away. Well, that act – that perceptive act, unseen by any one – that was God-in-action. Well, can I believe in the reality of that act? Can I represent him to myself as I would like to see him in the flesh? Can I see him successful? Can I see him – well, as I want to see him, and believe in the reality of that unseen state? If I can remain loyal to that unseen reality, I will have confirmation that he is the being that I am assuming that he is. Some one will write me or maybe I’ll meet him in the flesh, but in some way I will get confirmation that what I think I see in him or desire to see in him, and persuade myself that I do see in him, [that] it will come to pass.
Now, one day, in reading the 14th chapter of the book of John, having been told that Christ is in me, and here is Christ now speaking to the disciples, (well, if he is in me, what is he trying to tell me? He is speaking to the disciples)…he said: “You believe in God, believe in me also. In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you? Would I have told you that I go prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye shall be also.” (John 14:1-3) Well, it came to me as I read it, from some peculiar intuitive depth, that I am not talking to a disciple (something on the outside). I’m talking to myself! This whole conversation is something within myself. I take the body called Neville – this visible thing that is weak and limited and fragile, and I’m talking to it. You can’t go; you’re limited. It will take time to get there; it’ll take money to get there. Maybe you can’t afford either the time or the money.
But it will take me – if I’m Imagination – to go any place in this world without money, and I don’t need time. I can sit in a chair and put my body, cumbersome as it is, on a chair or on a bed, and if I am all Imagination, and God is in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination, then I can be any place in this world that I desire to be. So, I can go and prepare a place. So, I tried it. I tried assuming that I am where reason would deny it, my senses deny it, but I remained in that state until it seemed natural to me, just seemed natural. Well, then, I went there. And, then, I opened my eyes upon the world that I had shut out, and it was a shock to find myself back in the chair. Well, I if I analyze it, it seems stupid. What I did – it seemed real while I did it, and then one second later, here I am on my chair, and everything I see in my room denies that I did anything that the world would call real. But I did it!
And, then, in the not-distant future, I was forced across a series of events, which led up to the fulfillment of that state. Now, I did it on a very cold winter night in New York City. I had brought out my first book, calledYour Faith is Your Fortune, in the month of February in 1941. It was so cold – twelve or fourteen inches of snow on the ground – and I expected in those days simply a voluntary offering on the part of those who came. And many came just for contacts. They didn’t care what I had to say. They came to meet people, and they would go out for their coffee klatches and all these things after the meeting. I didn’t care. It was a crowded house – over a thousand people – in a little old church off Times Square. I expected that night, when I brought out my book, Your Faith is Your Fortune, that there would be the usual thousand, and this night because of the weather they couldn’t get through the snow, I think we had a hundred and fifty people, and there was a certain personal disappointment, because here was my first effort in bringing out a book. And, so I had my books there and a hundred and fifty came, not prepared to buy the book, and so, we packed up at the end of the talk.
When I went home that night the snow was, as I say, twelve or fourteen inches on the ground, and it was cold. When I got into my bed, I did this thing almost absentmindedly, but I did it, and I knew exactly what I did. Barbados, where I was born, is a little tropical island in the West Indies, and I assumed that I was actually on my bed in my mother’s home that I knew and loved
so well. And to prove that I was actually there, I just imagined the world relative to that position. I saw the world – not from my place in New York City, I saw it from Barbados. So, mentally I saw the world as I would see it if I were in Barbados. I thought of my place in New York City, and I saw it two thousand miles to the north of me. I thought of other places, and they were all related to where I am assuming that I am, and I fell asleep in that assumption. When I awoke the next morning, the snow was even higher, and I am not in Barbados, I am in New York City!
Well, time progressed. The war in Europe was on. England was at war. No ships were plying the Atlantic. They were going down faster than they could build them, and we were almost at war, and then came the month of August, and I received a cable from my family saying: “We didn’t tell you, because we knew you couldn’t come to Barbados. There aren’t any ships,” (and certainly in those days there were no planes) and they said: “Mother is dying. She’s been dying for two years, but now, this is it, and if you want to see her in this world once more, you’ve got to come now” – I mean, now.
I received that cable in the morning, and my wife and I sailed the very next night. One ship was leaving at midnight, the “Argentine,” and we sailed in late August for Barbados. And there I went to Barbados, the last place in that world that I intended to go. In fact, we had planned to go to Maine for a vacation. We were going to close that month and go to Maine for five or six weeks, and then return to reopen some time in October. But all plans were changed to fulfill what I had done in an idle moment because of disappointment.
But it taught me a lesson: not to use this law idly, not to use it to escape, but to use it deliberately because you cannot escape from it. A series of events will mold themselves, across which you will walk, leading up to the fulfillment of that state. And so here I put myself, just to escape from the cold and the disappointment of the evening, in Barbados of all places. Then something happens, and I am compelled to make the journey, the last place in the world we intended to go. And we sailed at midnight, and got there four and a half days later on this “Argentine” ship. (It was an American ship, but it was called the “Argentine.”)
Mother dies, as they all said she would, and I returned to the States with the knowledge of what I had done and began to teach it. And in that audience of, I would say, a thousand, they all began to apply it, with tremendous success. Then, where is God? If “all things [were] made by him, and without him [was] not anything made that is made” (John 1:3) then where is he? I knew exactly what I did, and I know what happened. Well, if I can trace what happened to an invisible cause (what I did) and repeat it, and tell that story to others, who can take it and try it and repeat it, well then, I have found causation. And if all causes spring from God, then I have found him. I have found Him as my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. There isn’t a thing in this world that wasn’t first imagined. Now, here you aren’t called to make the thing. Things are. All things in the world are. “Eternity exists, and all things in Eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy.” (William Blake) You can’t conceive of something that isn’t!
As a result of this in 1941, it was 1949 that I gave a series of lectures in Milwaukee, and the head chemist at Allis-Chalmers came to my meetings. I made some statement using a term that is a scientific term, and the word was “entropy.”Well, I might have used it, not as the scientist would have used it, but I had my own concept of what the word meant and my definition of it, and I said I can change the past. If I can make something, I can unmake it. Whatever I can create, I can uncreate. Whatever I can make, I can unmake. He said: “You can’t do it. For we use entropy in our laboratory every day, and entropy means the past is unalterable; you can’t change it. If the past could be changed, I wouldn’t know what I am doing in the lab…” He said: “All day long I receive little samples of water from all over the world, because we make these huge turbines. And from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – all over the world – they send samples, because the water passes through certain mineral deposits and carries with it whatever is in that mineral, and, so it cakes. We have to analyze that water and then bring up a solution, because we made the product.” And I said: “I don’t care what you say. I know what I’ve done. And you can undo the past. You can change it.”
“It can’t be done.”
I said: “As far as I am concerned, the whole vast world is finished. Creation is finished, and I am only becoming aware of it. Well, I need not confine myself to what my senses see and what reason allows and what wise men tell me I should accept. I can imagine a state. I can’t see it with my physical eye, but I can imagine a state, and that state imagined is. I can imagine a state that is in conflict with the facts of life. And the facts, you say, are, and they can’t be altered. I can imagine a state that would undo the fact. Well, that state exists. If I occupy that state it will undo the so-called fact you say is fixed forever.” Well, he questioned my sanity, but he was an awfully nice chap. His name was Professor Imhoff. He was the head of the department of this chemical setup. So, while he was a very wise and gentle and kind person.
I returned to New York City, and he sent me the “Scientific News Letter,” dated October the 15th, 1949, in which he said: “Now, Neville, I apologize for having said what I did. This man is far greater as a physicist than I am as a scientist. He is Professor Feynman, of Cornell University, one of the outstanding physicists of our day in speculative, theoretical physics; and this is his letter. And he wrote in this little letter, which was printed in the magazine, a story concerning the positron, a little particle that is produced in atomic disintegration. It’s like the electron, but differs in this respect. It is positive in its charge instead of being negative. Now, these are the words of Feynman, they are not mine. He says: “The positron is a wrong-way electron. It starts from where it hasn’t been, and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. It is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and then it returns to where it hasn’t been.” (Now, this is Feynman, this isn’t Neville.) Then he goes on to say: “When a little electron is moving speedily in space if it is bounced, it’s deflected, but continues on its course. But if it is bounced so hard, then its time sense is reversed, and it returns to where it hasn’t been.” “Now,” he said, “on the basis of this, we must now conclude that the entire concept that man held of the universe is false. We always believed that the future developed slowly out of the past. Now, with this concept which we have seen and photographed, we must now conclude that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.” This is 1949. That Professor, Richard Feynman, who is now at Caltech in Pasadena received the Nobel Prize last year for that paper. They held it up almost twenty years, for this is 1968 and he got it in 1967, and the paper came out in 1949.
I didn’t know it as a scientist. I knew it as a mystic. I see it. I can’t explain why; I only know everything is. The whole thing is finished, and all I have to do is to adjust to it. If I know what I want for myself or for another, I adjust to it, because the thing is. Well, if I adjust to it and it feels natural, when it feels natural, then I open my eyes upon this world that I have shut out for that purpose. As I open my eyes, I am turned around. I have actually been where reason would deny that I have been there; and then, as I open my eyes, I have been speeding with the speed of light from wherever I have assumed that I am to where physically I am. Now I am so shocked to find that I am not actually there, but I am here physically. My time sense is turned around. And now, I move across a bridge of incidents – a series of events – that compels me to move towards the fulfillment of that invisible state. And when I get there it is not invisible, it becomes visible. It throws itself on the screen of space, and the world calls that a fact. And they stand amazed at that, because that to them is real. Prior to its becoming objective, it was unreal.
So, I tell you: faith in unseen reality. You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to unseen reality that is the secret of faith. So, when he tells us: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (Hebrews 11:1) by faith, we understand that the world was created by the Word of God, so that “things seen were made from things that do not appear…”
Now, let me share with you this story. A friend of mine living in L.A. came many years ago from Pittsburgh. So in ’66 she returned to Pittsburgh and met the few friends who are still in this world. Many have departed. There was one lady she speaks of as Betty. Well, Betty married this man, and his name is supposed to be Matthew. Well, Matthew was suffering from a certain disease, which led progressively to total deafness. In the interval, it is accompanied by dizziness, and wrenching. What the name is, I don’t know. She told me, but I am not familiar with these medical terms. But it is something that is incurable as of today. No doctor knows how to arrest it, and it progressively moves towards total deafness. In the meanwhile, it is a most painful condition that accompanies it, and these horrible dizzy spells, and then the wrenching. She told the story as I told it to her, how you can revise the past; that in spite of the fact that he is moving towards the inevitable total deafness, it need not be. They can go back and change the past to the point in time – which was fourteen years before – when this thing began to show in his body. He didn’t believe it. She said to me: “He would ask me a hundred and one questions concerning it, not because he wanted to be cruel, but he is a rational being, a very intelligent person, and it didn’t make sense. Because it didn’t make sense, he discounted it; but Betty thought: ‘”I will try it.’”
“Now, she said, “it was a very difficult thing for Betty and myself, because my parents were both deaf, and Betty’s parents were both deaf, and we were raised in the environment of deaf people. We had to learn sign language to communicate with our parents. So, Betty had the experience of deaf parents, both of them, and I had the experience of deaf parents, and to be confronted with this picture – it was a horrible, horrible picture. Betty said to me: “I will do it every night,” and she took a simple little sentence: “Matthew” (she called him Matt) – “Matt is hearing perfectly.” That’s all that she did. Meanwhile he’s getting worse and worse and worse.
A year went by, and he’s still progressing towards the inevitable end of total deafness, when in his business he had this excruciating pain from ear to ear, and he cried out. Well, they rushed him to the doctor [and] the doctor gave him an injection to alleviate the pain. Then the doctor said: “You can’t go back on the job right away. You must go to your room and rest for a while.” Well, in the room, he dozed, and went into a little sleep and when he awoke, he was hearing perfectly – hearing perfectly! He was sent home early that evening. He usually arrives at 6:00 o’clock. When he came home on the early side, the wife greeted him with the usual: “Oh, what’s wrong? What happened at the office today?” and he replied: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” He used the identical word that she had, night after night, heard. All in her imagination, she heard him say: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” So, she heard her own name called by her husband, Matt, and he confirmed it by saying: “I am hearing perfectly.” Then he said: “I believe, I believe, I believe!”
Now, that is a year and a half ago. She said: “In the interval we never breathed it, did not mention it in our letters. I communicate constantly, but I did not for one moment state anything further than I did when I was there in the flesh and told her of a principle,” a principle which you could call by any name.We call it God. Well, God is one’s own marvelous human Imagination. That’s God! 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. And all things are possible to God. You and I – here we are, fashioned by the grace of God, born by the grace of God, and we dare to put a limit on the power of God! Here we, the creature born by the grace of God, and then we tell God (or tell ourselves) what he can’t do. And therefore, give to God, who made us and brought us into the world…and now we give to him the sin against the Holy Ghost, which as far as I see it is man’s doubt. The only thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is man’s doubt in the power of God.
You might have heard the late Senator Kennedy in one or two of his political speeches. He was very fond of quoting this passage from George Bernard Shaw – in fact, his brother Teddy, in the eulogy in New York City quoted it. He didn’t give credit to George Bernard Shaw, but his brother had done it time and again, and therefore people knew, those who heard him, that it was not Teddy’s or Bobbie’s – it was George Bernard Shaw. And this is the quote: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’” Why not? The world tells me it can’t be. Why not? Are not all things possible to God? And did not God become me, that I may become God? Well, if he became me, I can’t dissect the body and find him in an atom. I can’t find him in the brain. I can’t find him in any organ of the body. Therefore, where is he? Just where is he? I am told in Scripture he has a name, and this name is his name forever and forever, and the name defined is: “I Am.” Well, that’s the core of my being. I can’t put it aside.
I sit down to imagine. Who’s imagining? I am. I have never been able to put “I am” out there and look at it. It is the being perceiving, not the thing perceived. It is the being making, not the thing made. It’s the being creating; not the thing created. And man stands amazed at his own creations– and forgets the creator. He falls in love with all the things he makes, and he forgets completely the maker; and the maker is “I Am.” There is no other maker. There is no other God.
So, when I found that out, I knew that when I went to Barbados, I was actually sleeping in my mother’s home in a bed that I knew well, and it was warm. I could feel the warmth of the tropics. I could detect the odors of the tropics; they differ from the northern world. All the things that are related to the tropics, I detected. Well, who is doing it? I am. I can’t get away from it. Is that God? Yes. Well, he didn’t take a train there. No, there aren’t any trains. He didn’t take a plane?
No, there were no planes then. He didn’t take a ship? No. He simply was there. Wherever I assume that I am, I am there.
And, so, if I can assume that I am elsewhere, to the point that some one like my sister actually sees me there, well, I must be wherever I am in Imagination.
One day I had occasion, while in New York City, to assume that I am being seen by my sister, whose son was desperately ill, age 17, and riddled with cancer. No one knew what was wrong with him until they opened him, and then he was too far-gone. The whole body was completely riddled at the age of seventeen! And they say that if you are young when you develop this, then like all young things, it grows. If you are developed to the age of sixty or seventy, the chances are you won’t die of it because things aren’t building then. You are only marking time. But youth is growing. Whether it be a good cell or a bad cell, it simply grows rapidly. So at the age of seventeen he wasn’t feeling well. They wonder: what’s wrong with the boy? And some one suggested going in and taking a little look on the inside. They thought it might be some appendix or some peculiar thing there. So they opened him up and sewed him back – not a thing they could do. The whole body was simply gone.
Well, to comfort my sister, I thought I would put my body physically in New York City and assume I’m in Barbados. I’m in my nephew’s room, and when my sister enters the room she is going to see me, and not her son. I actually assumed that I am there. I am occupying the same space that my nephew Billy occupied, and then when I felt it natural, I assumed that my sister came in. She came in, and she came over and she looked, and she couldn’t see any one but her brother, Neville. I came out of that silence. I came into the living room where a friend, by invitation, had arrived for a cocktail, because I had said: “Drop by at the cocktail hour – it’s around 5:00 o’clock, and we’ll have a drink.” I went into the silence around 4:30, and I didn’t come out until maybe after 5:00 – 5:15 or 5:20. So when I came into the living room, she said: “Neville, what’s wrong with you? You are always so gay and light. Why do you seem so heavy now?” and I told her what I had just done.
Eight days later (we had no air mail coming, but had to depend upon mail by the sea), eight days later I received a letter from my sister. She said: “Neville, I don’t understand it, but this very moment I went into Billy’s room and I could not for the life of me see Billy. I am seeing you. I walked right over to the bed, and I looked at my son, and he is not there, and it’s you! And you’re looking at me and smiling. And I could not – I tried and tried and tried, and Billy was not there; it is you. I don’t understand it, Neville. If you have any knowledge or anything about it to throw light upon this, tell me.” That same lady was there eight days later, and I brought her letter out that I had received that day and showed it to her. So I had two witnesses: my wife and this lady. So, I know that I must be wherever I am in Imagination. So I tell you: don’t treat it lightly. You can put yourself in prison, and find yourself committing an act of which you are totally unaware, or accused of something of which you are not aware, and going to prison. People put themselves there. People put themselves out of it. People don’t realize, not a thing is happening by accident. It’s all by unseen causation. So you actually move yourself into states emotionally, and dwell in [them] just for a split second. And you jump back – or you think you jump back. You did. But the bridge is now about to appear, and across the bridge of incidents you walk, leading up to the fulfillment of what you did unwittingly.
So, this is what I mean by faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” You hope for it? Well, now, the assurance is faith. Faith is not going to make it so. Faith is loyalty to the unseen reality. You know what you did? Well, now, that’s unseen by mortal eye. Now, you remain loyal to that unseen reality, and see how this bridge of incidents is woven, and you do not consciously devise it. No man can consciously devise the incidents necessary to lead you to the fulfillment of what you’ve done. Well, this is what I mean by faith. The very substance of what the world calls real is unseen. It’s unseen reality.
The whole vast creation is finished, just as Feynman said, and he got his prize for it. So he got the fifty thousand dollars for that which I said as a mystic, but you can’t give a mystic money, because he has no standing in the community. Feynman has standing. He teaches physics at Caltech, so he could say the identical thing in his own words, and they say: “Isn’t this marvelous?” And so, he has a paper on it, now a book on it, and a title to it, so he has all the titles. And because I am the unknown, and in the eyes of Feynman not educated by his standards, no formal education – but what I see, I see, and I can’t deny it. What I experience mystically, I can’t deny. So, I am speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. He goes in and he theorizes. He experiments, yes, and succeeds occasionally in taking a photograph of the so-called unseen little particle [and] he has enough photographs to prove the existence of the positron. And then comes his wonderful honor – fifty thousand dollars, and all that goes with it.
But I tell you, in spite of all the books that are written, with all the great titles signed behind his name of the author, the book of books is the Bible, and no one knows the authors. They are all anonymous. No one knows who’s Peter, who’s James, who’s Matthew, Luke, Mark, John – no one knows. They are anonymous and they remain so. The characters – no one knows if they ever walked the face of the earth. I tell you that they didn’t. Those who wrote it – they did, but the characters are anonymous. And the characters of Scripture are all eternal states through which man passes. They are states – eternal states, not historical states. It’s not secular history. It is salvation history.
What I have told you so far as of now, in the past week (I gave you five, and tonight is the sixth) it’s all based upon what I’ve experienced. And I tell you: everyone will experience it. Not one can fail, because if one failed, God failed. And He isn’t going to fail. So, let the fool say in his heart: there is no God, like this book, God is Dead and all that nonsense. Let them have fun. He wrote that just to make money. And of course, because the title caught on, especially today, he made oodles of money out of a title, a title with a book full of nonsense. But he’s not alone; he has a lot of company. I tell you: you have faith in God, but don’t look outside to find him. You aren’t going to find him out there. You are going to find him one day by a series of mystical experiences. And when they happen to you, they will happen in the first person, present-tense experience, and you’ll know who God is! You’ll know that you are, for God’s purpose is to give himself to you as though there were no other in the world, just you. Well, if he gives himself to you completely, there can’t be you and God, just you, and you are he.
And the whole plan is set up, and when it begins to unfold within you in a first person, present- tense experience, I can’t tell you the thrill. Now, when you depart this world, you are not restored to life, as all people are who have not had the experience, you instantly put on your body of glory, and you’re in an entirely different age, a different world altogether.And all the others wait for that moment in time when they, too, have the experience. And then when death comes following the experience, they instantly move from the body of decay (for this [is] decay) into a body that is immortal, a body of glory. So, that is for every one in the world. And may I tell you: don’t try to argue with anybody who tries to give you all the reasons of Caesar why it can’t be. They put you in a little furnace and bring out a few little ashes and say: that was the man. Therefore, he can’t survive, because that’s it. Well then, let him have his little fun. It’s perfectly all right. Let him be amused. Don’t move; let him be amused. He’s such a wise person! So wise in his own council and so wise in the eyes of fools. He can only be wise in the eyes of fools; so don’t argue with him. Leave him alone just as he is.
So, he will find himself – when men call him dead – restored to life, and he will be totally unaware how on earth it could happen. But he’s so blind anyway; he won’t even recognize it. He will take it for granted, as we take breathing for granted. We take all the normal functions of the body for granted, and yet each function is a miracle. You put a little of bread in your mouth, and suddenly by a chemistry you do not understand it is no longer bread; it’s blood and bone and tissue. And what you can’t incorporate into your system and use wisely, you expel. Even the act of expulsion from the system is a mystery. And yet we take all these mysteries for granted, and the whole thing is – oh, well, we call it nature. That covers a multitude of nonsense. Nature! Define it for me.
So, I tell you tonight, you take your dream – your noble dream, not only for yourself, but for others. What do you want? Ask them. Now, don’t argue the point – what do you want? Well then, in your mind’s eye dare to assume that they have what at the moment their reason and their senses deny and everything about them denies; but you remain faithful to the assumption, and your assumption relative to them.Though false at the moment, if you persist in it, it will harden into fact. Now, you try it. I could give you unnumbered cases, but why repeat them over and over? Every case history in the Bible has been repeated now for two thousand years, and they still hold up, but they are all to encourage man to test God – to try him. “Come, test yourself and see.” You are not asked to test another.
In the 13th chapter of II Corinthians: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourself and see, unless of course you fail to meet the test.”
Well, if you fail to meet the test because of doubt and lack of faith, well and good. You might go and say: “It doesn’t work.” It’s perfectly all right. So, it doesn’t work for you because you did not believe it. He puts no limit to the power of belief. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So can I really believe at the moment that I am trying to believe, everything tells me it can’t be done? Can I ignore the facts of life, and then persuade myself that it is done and live in the end as though it were true? I tell you: if you try it, you will be able to write me and give me fantastic stories. But in the end, it is God’s Promise that concerns me.
Oh, to teach you the law is marvelous, teach every one the law because you are living in the world of Caesar. You must pay rent, you must eat, you must shelter yourself, you must have clothing – all these things in the world of Caesar are essential, so teach man the law, that he may fulfill all these things. But don’t neglect the Promise. And God’s Promise is to give himself to you. That’s his Promise that he will actually give himself to you! Before he made the Promise, God was the Father, so when he succeeds in giving himself to you, though you are now in the female body, when he gives himself to you (and you will not find it strange) you will one day awake and you are the father, even though you may now be the mother of a dozen children. And in the day it will not seem strange to you that you are father, God the Father. And if he has a son (because he has to have a son if he’s a father) and then that son is going to call you “father” (he is not going to call you “mother”) he will call you “father” in the fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, because Scripture must be fulfilled in man. So, man’s purpose in life is only to fulfill Scripture.
But in the meanwhile, Caesar demands. He demands taxes. He demands this; he demands the other. Well, give Caesar what is Caesar’s, but don’t fail to keep alive the Promise of God, and dwell upon it.
Now let us go into the Silence. Good. Now, are there any questions?
(Q. Inaudible)
Neville: My dear, yes! To those who were not present: This friend of ours down south – her name is Marta – she was coming to Laguna to the Art Festival, she and three others, the four of them. It’s a perfectly marvelous festival every year down in Laguna. All the artists come, and the live artistry is perfectly marvelous the way they do it. They are simple little pictures of the great works of art, and then the curtain parts, the lights come on, and you think you are looking at a living, three-dimensional picture – unless there is some little child in it that can’t quite hold the stillness. This lively little girl one night, she had a little itch, and here in the perfect stillness she couldn’t resist the impulse, and there she was scratching herself. But it was a delightful thing just to watch it, because she was so natural in it. But they are perfectly rehearsed in it. Well, it is a sight that you can’t quite describe unless you go to see the Art Festival. Well, she was coming back, and the four of them stopped in at a Mexican restaurant to have a little snack. She doesn’t really smoke, but she said she wanted a cigarette. And her friend lit the cigarette for her and she took the cigarette and said: “Oh, I have such a strange feeling.” And with that she went right over and fell on the table and she was gone from this world! Well, Marta has had this experience. I tell you that God actually, literally became man, that man may become God. Every man that is “born from above” knows that he is God. But I could tell you from now to the ends of time, and you will only see me as an arrogant fool. You will never actually believe me until you have the experience to confirm the truth of what I say, because words could not persuade you. You have to actually have the experience.
So Marta, this night, finds herself in this huge, big interior. The front is one sheet of glass, and on the inside are huge, big columns like marble columns. It is very sparsely furnished. She sees one chair, and she takes the chair. She is seated, then, out of nowhere comes a carriage that is self- propelled. There aren’t horses, but it looks as though it should be drawn by horses. The door opens automatically and I step out, wearing an Inverness cape. (You know what the Inverness cape is.) I come forward into the interior of this place and, without showing any recognition of Marta I began to proclaim the power of God. And she said, as she looked at me I was clothed in sheer power. It wasn’t a merciful power, it wasn’t compassionate – it was simply power. It was creative power. And I am simply talking of power. And she said to herself: “Why, it’s Neville, and he is God!” and she kept on repeating to herself: “He is Neville and he is God; he is Neville and he is God.” And, then, without any further recognition of her, I completed the proclamation of power, turned, and then, as though by appointment, the carriage came into view. The door opened automatically, and I stepped in and vanished. The whole thing vanished.
So, here she saw God clothed in power, wearing the face of a friend. Her friend is Neville. Scripture tells you – and it’s the foundation by which man is set free – when Paul was accused of not being an Apostle, he said: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Haven’t I seen the Lord Jesus?” So, he laid it down as an indispensable prerequisite: to have seen the Lord Jesus in order to be set free from this bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. Then, in the book of John, he said: “I no longer call you slaves, for a slave does not know what the master is doing; I call you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:15) So, here she saw a friend, but the friend was wearing power. It was God’s power, and she knew it was God. So she is set free. She is not restored as the world is restored when they die. She is set free from this age, and Marta is now in her glorious body. She has met the qualifications for freedom. But I can tell you from now to the ends of time…I could have told Marta, as I did, but not until Marta had the experience, could Marta ever believe. So, they laughed at Paul, because how can you share these experiences with man? You can’t do it. Man has to have the experience.
And the lady who was with her, whose name is Marge, had the experience of seeing me on the beach, standing with my back to an enormous body of water. There was no land beyond; it was simply an endless body of water, and I was speaking to an enormous crowd of people, all of different faiths, different persuasions – yet each heard me in the tongue wherein they were born. And as she came upon this scene (she knew that it’s Neville) she sees Neville, but she also knew he was Jesus, so she has had a similar experience. Only Marta called it God, and she called it Jesus, because she knew she was looking at her friend Neville, but she’s also looking at Jesus.
So, I tell you: in the end there is only one body, and that one body is Jesus. “One body, one spirit, one lord, … one God and Father of all” So, in the end, all are Jesus! All are God! All are the Father! I can tell you in words, but I can’t persuade you. I have to desire to persuade you against your will. I know the day will come when you will actually have a similar experience and others will see you in that role, and have an experience and be convinced that you are God.
Now, it frightens people to say that. They want some little God on the outside, and I say everyone is God. We are told that in Scripture: “I say, ye are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you will die like men and fall as one man, oh, princes.” (Psalm 82:6,7) That’s in Scripture, and yet you read it and say: “Oh, it doesn’t really make any difference. That isn’t right. That was wrong. When God dictated that, or inspired the prophet to write it, he must have been drinking. Well, how can that be?” And, so, the prophets – that is, the great scholars – cannot quite understand that passage, the 82nd Psalm. They can’t get it. So, because they can’t get it, it isn’t true. Well, we go through life that way. You will find people all over the world – if they can’t understand something, it just isn’t true, it’s not good, and they will set themselves up as the criterion of what ought to be. Their moral and ethical code is the only code that should be adopted. If they don’t smoke, no one should smoke. If they don’t drink, no one should drink. If they are celibates because nature allowed it, no one should know anything about sex. You find these people writing these things for us after nature has outlawed sex in their life. So, when they hit the age of eighty, because they are impotent, every one should be. And they write laws and say they were divinely inspired. If today, eating meat on Friday is right (it was always right) and, yet for centuries it was wrong and a mortal sin –but now it’s all right, well, if it is right today, it was always right.
Now, if a man can marry today…and eventually they will say the priests can marry, it wasn’t always so that they could not. If you read Scripture, it speaks of Peter’s wife, and yet the present Pope claims that he is directly descended from Peter, the first Pope. Well, if the first Pope was married, then what’s wrong with marriage, when the very first command to man is: “Replenish the earth; multiply and replenish the earth.” That’s the command. So, what’s wrong with multiplying and replenishing the earth? Yet some Pope, who undoubtedly was impotent, just said that no one should marry. If he can’t perform the act, no one should perform it.
All right, we have Pope Alexander VI. Have you ever heard of the Borgias, Lucretia and Cesare Borgia, brother and sister? Well, they were his children, and he was Pope Alexander VI, and their name is associated with poison. If they didn’t like you, you were in their way politically – poison them. They were the Pope’s children. Go back and read history. You can find this in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Pope Alexander VI was the father of Cesare Borgia and Lucretia Borgia, the youngest ever given the cardinal’s hat, at the age of nineteen. Talk of nepotism! Well, now, all this is history. You don’t have to be afraid of it. These are facts. Well, if it was right then, it’s right now! Because God’s Word cannot be altered. These things are not in God’s Book at all. These are the traditions of men. And we read in Scripture that to keep alive the traditions of men, you go against the Word of God. That’s what he tells you. So, find out, is it Scripture? Or, is it something that a man wants to impose upon society?
Now, you take what we have tried to tell you tonight, the story of faith, and try to live by it. You’ll prove it. You won’t disprove it, not if you realize that you are the operant power. It doesn’t operate itself. You are the operant power. And, then, you will find an easier way of living in this world, and then put your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ-in-you.
Now, the time is up. Thank you. Now let us go into the silence.
In this lecture, Goddard reconceptualizes faith as an active allegiance to an imperceptible but fully real state. He moves beyond passive belief to emphasize that unwavering loyalty to the unseen reality catalyzes its objective manifestation. By rooting his argument in Scripture, he reframes biblical passages as metaphors for inner states rather than historical events.
Central to his thesis is the idea that all creation already exists in its totality, and imagination serves as the bridge by which individuals align with pre-existent realities. This panentheistic view equates human imagination with the divine act of creation, granting each person the ability to inhabit any desired state through assumption and feeling. The unseen becomes experiential when one adjusts one’s inner consciousness accordingly.
Goddard anchors his metaphysical framework in practical anecdotes, recounting experiments such as mentally relocating to Barbados and healing his wife’s friend’s husband from deafness. These case studies function as empirical proofs of the law: internal assumptions yield external confirmations via a “bridge of incidents.” Such narratives validate the causal power of thought and the mind’s role in shaping material events.
By referencing Richard Feynman’s work on positrons and reversed time, Goddard bridges esoteric spirituality and modern physics. This juxtaposition underscores a non-linear, block-universe perspective in which past, present, and future coexist in a laid-out space-time continuum. The convergence of mystical teaching and scientific theory lends intellectual credibility to his claims.
On a psychological level, the practice of maintaining a felt sense of the desired state addresses cognitive dissonance and doubt, empowering individuals to reshape habitual thought patterns. Theologically, Goddard’s teaching democratizes divine experience, asserting that every person can become an embodiment of creative, godlike imagination. Ultimately, this paradigm promises an immortal “body of glory” that transcends physical mortality through the mastery of inner faith.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
