In this lecture dated 30-10-1967, Neville Goddard emphasizes that imagining itself is the sole creative force and urges focus on clarity of form rather than exerting will over others. He argues that remembering past imaginings blocks further manifestation and calls believers to remain in the present tense with the divine name "I AM." Using examples of dream sequences, he illustrates how divine truths can surface from the depths of the soul even when the rational mind cannot recall details. He critiques the obsession with external influence, reminding students that all experience is self-generated and that external conditions follow the inner scene drawn in the imagination. Scriptural insights and mystical symbols, such as the Hebrew word Yachiyd and the concept of “Friday” as the god of love, underscore the unity of man with the divine. Practical anecdotes about visualization, dream interpretation, and meditation reinforce the necessity of perfecting the form in mental imaging. He concludes by inviting listeners to test the law of assumption in everyday situations, trusting that clear imaginal acts will naturally coalesce into physical reality.
Synopsis: Emphasizes the importance of clarifying form when imagining and not worrying about influencing others. The imaginal act is the cause, and that individuals should focus on what they want in their own world and forget about influencing others. He also mentions that even wealthy people and those with great fortunes have no real impact on someone’s world and that they too could disappear.
I think most of you know that I firmly believe that imagining creates reality. I personally have proved it and I think the majority of you have. If someone now complains, having confessed that they believe it, that what they originally imagined is not as good and as wonderful as they are now experiencing, then ask them, “Why are you now remembering and not imagining?” If I can say I remember when, then I am not now imagining that. So am I really putting this into practice? I can say, well alright, I believe it, but I once imagined something and it’s not as I am now experiencing in my life. Just simply say, “You really believe that imagining creates reality and your original imagining state was?” They’ll say yes. “Then what on earth are you doing when you say ‘I once imagined it?’” Then they are not now imagining. God’s name is I AM. Man finds it so difficult to keep this in the present tense. It’s always outside of self.
Now, when you imagine, may I tell you, you may, and chances are you will, influence others.But do not think in terms of influence think only in terms of clarity of form.For instance, someone will say to you, I want a better position, I want more money, I want greater responsibility. Alright, now you conceive a scene and give all your effort to clarifying form, just form, like drawing a picture. So you’ve conceived a scene. It could be that you’re giving the party or they are giving the party, and then you will raise your glass or they will raise it, and toast the occasion…a better job, more money.Don’t think in terms of influencing some superior on the job like the one you will call, say, a boss. Forget him.He could drop dead tonight; he could be discharged tonight.Don’t think in terms of anyone outside of the clarity of form.What would imply that you have it?Well, if I gave a party tonight for you who got it, or you gave the party and invited me and I am your guest, and then we sat around the table and came that occasion to raise a glass in toast…so you will toast the event…and I will raise mine and drink with you.
Well now, that is not influencing or thinking of influencing anyone in this world; we’re going to the end. So if you’re going to apply this law, it’s only dealing with form—you go to the end. Then what form, what structure would imply that you have it?And forget anyone in this world that you may influence. So I’m not going to deny that every imaginal act influences, but you don’t have to put any interest on influencing anyone in this world.Leave them alone…leave everyone alone.They are not really cause; you are cause, your imaginal at is the cause.So what do you want in this world? Forget everyone else.You may have someone employing you that may have one billion dollars, a private fund, like Hughes, like the Rockefellers, like that crowd. They have it, but they are not causing anything in your world. They could all drop dead tonight, did you know, and vanish from this world and leave not a trace behind. The present generation of the Rockefellers know nothing of their great-grandfather who made it. They must be told by the present, who are simply grandsons of that fortune, and they will tell them, and they wisely modify it and others will modify it. But who knows of the original one who really went out and checked everything, the figures? And so he is gone.
So, you will influence people, no question about it. Because why? Everything in this world is yourself pushed out; you’re only influencing yourself. But don’t think in terms of anyone on the outside of self. What do you want? When you know exactly what you want, then put all your attention on clarity of form. So I would have a little dinner party and I’d have the whole thing set up just right. Then what after that am I imagining? So to confess or to complain that I once imagined, and my original imaginal act was far greater than this, is to confess that I am not now imagining. If imagining creates reality then forget the memory picture. What am I imagining? So this is a part of this fantastic mystery that we are trying to get over here.
Now, let me share with you a few that came this week. Here is a series. This one, she finds herself—it’s all in one week, this series of dreams all in one week—and “Here I am in my dream with a bunch of children and they have lost something. I am trying to find it for them. I’m looking…then as I’m looking for something they have lost, I find a little bag with a draw string. I pick it up. I open the bag to find a watch and the children tell me that is a treasure, you have found a treasure. And that’s the end of that. Then I find myself the next night in this state: all the things I want and they are all on wheels—people, places and things all on wheels. And I’m on a wheel. It’s all moving. I’m saying to my self and complaining, ‘This is not what I want!’ All these things are moving on wheels and I am still with a sense of longing. And then I wake.” Remember, this is the sequence, all in a week—first a watch, then everything, and she’s dissatisfied. She’s not satisfied with all these things. They’re all on wheels, all my desires. And with that feeling in her throat, it’s still a longing.
Then comes a third, she said, “Now in this dream I find myself following an enormous crowd, I’m walking up pathways, walking down stairways, walking up stairways because you are giving lectures in all these places. I am thrilled as I stop to hear, and I hear it over and over, and every time I hear it I’m thrilled with the revelation of what you’re giving me. But one thing impressed me. We came to a place, it was a beautiful campus…lovely kept grounds, all the lawns, the roadways, and all the buildings, ivy climbing up and covering all the buildings. I came into this building and here you are giving the most marvelous things. I was thrilled one after the other as you said what you did; and I said to myself, ‘I must remember this’ and I made a mental effort to remember what you were saying…because one explosion after the other of the great truths. And I woke and I could not recall one…could not bring one back to memory.
“Then the next night, again I am in a dream and I am following you. I go to a place, it’s a huge, enormous expansive white house, and I know that you are lecturing there, so I go in. All the rooms are empty save where you are and then the adjacent room where my father is. I know that my father built this house, he built this house.” Don’t forget that aspect of the dream—the father is unseen, he’s in the adjacent room. This time I am addressing all my remarks to the dreamer, and as I speak to her I’m telling her things that cause her to explode with joy, but she can’t remember them, save one. I turn to her and I say with a profound authority, “My name is Friday.” She knows it has tremendous significance. Then she said to me, “Yes, and that means ‘O my darling.’” Then I smiled and nodded affirmatively. Then she said, “I woke. But the things that preceded that I do not recall. I do know what you said when you said ‘My name is Friday’ had tremendous significance. Now, Neville, this seems to me the most insane nonsense, and yet as I write it I know in the depth of my soul that this has a profound significance. I heard something of tremendous importance, and yet on the surface it seems just simply the essence of nonsense.”
Well, may I tell you, you heard and saw correctly. I told you when I told you that my name is Friday I told you that I am the god of love…that’s what I told you. When you write mythology it’s not altogether vision, it’s part vision, so they call it the goddess of love. But when you stand in the presence of God, who is love, it’s man. So I told you my name is Friday. “He who is united with the Lord becomes one Spirit with him,” as we are told in the 6th chapter of 1st Corinthians (verse 17). I stood in the presence of the risen Lord, who is the embodiment of love, he incorporated me into his body, and I am forever one with that body. “There’s only one body, only one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of us all” (Eph. 4:4). Whoever is incorporated into that one body is one with it. So when you said to me and I nodded, “It means ‘O my darling,’ well, may I tell you, that word is used only ten or twelve times in scripture…never translated as darling but defined as darling. It’s Yachiyd. If you do not know Hebrew and can look it up in Hebrew in your concordance (if you have Strong’s Concordance, it is 3173), you will find it defined as “my darling.” You’ll find it defined a “my only one, my son, my only son.” That’s how you’ll find the word defined.
Well, anyone who is incorporated into that body is that word translated “O my darling.” So you knew it in the depths of your soul when you heard me say Friday, for Friday is simply the God of love, that’s what it means. So when you’re incorporated into that body that’s what you are. So may I tell you, you heard it perfectly, and what you did not bring back to this world in your conscious, rational mind you still have in the depths of your soul. So all the instruction that you heard in that past week, where you heard it and you were thrilled and your heart burst with excitement because you heard it, every word was true.
This word Yachiyd first appears in the 22nd chapter of Genesis (verse 16). The Lord said to Abraham, “Because you did not withhold your son, your only son from me”—the word son and only son is Yachiyd. He’s speaking now of Isaac, the promised child. In the gospel of John, the 19th chapter, he quotes from the 12th chapter of Zechariah, and this is the quote—this is after the crucifixion, after everything has taken place, the resurrection has taken place—and these are the words. Having first told them, “Not one bone shall be broken from his body” (verse 36) then quotes his passage from Zechariah, “They shall look upon him whom they have pierced” (verse 37). But he doesn’t complete it. If you read the 12th chapter, the 10th verse, of Zechariah and complete the verse, then you’ll read the words, “And they shall mourn for him as one who mourns for an only child. The word “only child” is Yachiyd, the same word which means “O my darling.”
So everyone is going to experience it, and when he experiences it he is going to tell it and tell everyone who will listen to him. Some will believe it and some will not believe it. Those who believe it will in the depths of their soul encounter him teaching, teaching, teaching, night after night in multiple places. You’ll go from place to place teaching and you will hear it. If you don’t bring it through to the conscious reasoning mind, it doesn’t really matter. You’ve heard it…what you brought through…at least the name I told you, and you brought through he told me his name was Friday. And Friday simply means the God of love, that’s all that it means. Because the word Yachiyd means “unity”—that’s the first definition given the word—it means sole. Not s-o-u-l but s-o-l-e, in the sense unique, the only one. Because everyone incorporated into that one body is “the only one.” There’s only one body, one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of all. But it takes all of us as eternal brothers to form that body. So when you get into that body you are one with that body forever and forever and you are Friday. You are the God of love.
On this level no one sees it…they can’t see it. But she saw it in Spirit and had the experience and brought it back. She could not bring back the instruction, all that she heard. That’s alright. She has it anyway, because she heard it and she was fired night after night with the instruction, all that she heard. She saw this man rushing towards me, eagerly rushing towards me, and then he sat, and I began to instruct him, and she eavesdropped, she listened. In her letter to me, “I listened in and I knew he loved you beyond measure. I could tell from his expression, all that he acted, how he loved you. What you said to him was so explosive and so thrilling as I listened to all the instructions you gave to him. But in the white house of my father you directed all of your instruction to me.” See the symbolism? The father was unseen. And in this enormous, expansive white house, they were all unoccupied save the two rooms…one the father occupied it. He was standing in the one room and only one door led into the two rooms. So in the other room where I was instructing, I directed all of my attention to her and told her of this profound mystery of being. Everything was directed to her. But she knew her father had built this house, it was his house.
Well, a dream is ego-centric. The whole thing is taking place in her. The whole vast dream unfolds in a man, but all of us are contained in each other, so I at that moment represented her father instructing on the outside. For the whole thing is in man. Every dream is ego-centric. So here, the father is unseen; he projects himself into the seen being teaching and instructing. All of these thoughts are directed towards her. In that moment I only revealed my name. Well, the name was enough. I am telling her who her father really is: her father is the God of love, that’s what I’m telling her. I was only used form the depths of her own soul to explain what she heard. For, believe it, all dreams are ego-centric. So, the source of all dream is God and God is in man, and God is man. God is her own wonderful Father. But he’s out of sight, presented now in the form of the one that she trusts as a teacher, and I am used to explain to her what happened. But it happened all in one week. Night after night these things are coming.
But to come back to his level…may I tell you, imagining creates reality. You can start on this level. The first words given to us by the one who reveals it, who comes to reveal is simply “Repent and believe in the story, believe in the gospel”—the story of salvation (Mark 1:15). For only repentance, which is a radical change of attitude, could simply take this powerful Imagination and burst it through this world of death. This is the world of death! So I ask everyone to simply take it literally, and day after day after day simply test it. Test it!
Another one came from a gentleman who was only here for the past few weeks, being transferred from San Francisco, and the one…well, he gave me two, he gave me four. The first two prior to coming here, they are something almost preparatory…they prepared him for the coming…the snakes and so on. But in the coming here, he found himself right after he heard me taking his hand from the top of his head and peeling his entire head, and bringing all of the skin down to his neck. Here he is peeling the entire head. After he’s peeled the entire head, then he puts it back up again like a bag over his head. He knows that he should not see anything from the outside, yet in some strange way, from the inside he is generating light so he can see the outside. But he knows the outside is completely dark…but now he’s generating light from within.
May I tell you, “All that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plt.71) So when you came here you came here on time. Nothing happens but on time. You took off, being prepared, all the outer beliefs, or you are taking them off but putting them back in a different manner. And then light comes from within and you will see from within, and then begin to govern your world from within…that nothing is from without. What is coming from without is being drawn from the activity taking place from within you.
Then he said, “I’ve only heard you twice,” in his letter, “and I went to my friend, having missed you on a Monday night. I was tired and she put on your tape for me. I thought, well, I’ll close my eyes and simply listen, so I listened to what you were saying. I must have fallen into a light sleep and in the light sleep I felt the most terrific blow on the right side of my head…two blows…and I either had the impression or I saw the index finger extended and pointing. Now it’s two days later and, may I tell you, I’m still feeling the pain of the blow on my head.” May I tell you, good for you! It comes this way. Don’t let any doctor tell you that you had a migraine or this, that or the other, forget it! This is how it happens. You peeled your entire head and took off the outer skin, the Esau, and you put it back on because in this world you’ve got to wear it. But now you are going to see it differently and you will see the world from within. May I tell you now, though you’ve only been here just a little while, forget the little while, those who come at the 11th hour get the same thing as those who came at the first hour (Mat. 20:9). “Is it not mine to give?” said he. So you are complaining he comes at the 11th hour and you give him just as much as you give those who came in at the first hour? So everyone gets the same thing.
These blows are essential…they are actually essential. Doctors will not understand it, no one will understand it, but they are essential to the awakening from within us; for there is one who is sleeping within us. That wonderful hymn of Isaac Watts when he speaks of “wrapped within the silence of the tomb the Great Redeemer sleeps.” Then he tells us how hail and death combine their force to hold our Lord in this manner, but the Great Conqueror arose and burst the little fragile chain. He sleeps within us, and he is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God. When he awakes you are God! There is nothing but God in this world. And you can put him to the test right here.
So my friend who wrote this wonderful letter giving a series of these visions really saw it perfectly. I will tell her mother, who is here tonight, you tell her when you go home, she hasn’t lost a thing, not a thing. It was all told her when she came from place to place. For I was only used by her…the dream is ego-centric. Her father that she thinks of as her earthly father who built the white house is only a symbol of the Eternal Father that she is seeking. And I, the present teacher in this world, again it’s only a symbol of the instruction. So I was used from the depths of her own soul to reveal to herself all that she already knows. Well, she knows it. She didn’t encounter this called Neville, she simply is awakening to her own being. All this is herself.
For in the end we are one. There’s only a brotherhood, an eternal brotherhood, and a fatherhood because each is the father of the same child. How else could I know that you and I are one were it not that this symbol is set up in eternity: that when you become the father of the child that I know I am the father of then you and I are one. There is no other way of proving the unity, this eternal brotherhood, without the common fatherhood of all of us. If you had one son and I had another, then we could complain…I want more for my son than you want for yours. But no, there’s one son and we so love that one son we all want to give that one son everything. That is the story. So that we are all one…but it can only be as we come, one by one, and we are gathered one by one into one body, into one Spirit, into one Lord, into one God and Father of all. That’s the story.
So tonight, do not think of influencing your boss. Do not think of influencing anyone in this world. Think only of clarity of form, that’s all you do. The creative Imagination is concerned only in perfecting form.Now, when I perfect form I am going to influence others, no question about it. Every time that I have done something that is marvelous, others worked to bring it to pass…so I influenced them.But I didn’t think in terms of others, I thought only in clarity of form.When I wanted to get out of Barbados when there were no ships…only two little ships and thousands trying to get out…I didn’t think of influencing anyone. I asked my brother who apparently had an influence. He had none, no one had influence. I simply walked up the gangplank.Clarity of form! If this is true if I am walking up this gangplank then it implies that I am sailing. Well, if it implies that I am sailing, someone is influenced. Do you know that 2,000 miles away in New York City someone cancels their passage. They were afraid because war was still a little bit in the air.And we came out on a ship where someone 2,000 miles away was afraid to take, so they cancelled it.
So I did influence her choice, her decision, and others present who had the advantage of getting it before me, because it was an enormous list waiting and it wasn’t given to them. So I influenced the decision of the one who had the power to distribute whatever the ticket was. He justified it by saying, well after all, there are only two beds in the stateroom, but the child is so small she could sleep with her mother, and therefore, we could get three in instead of simply two. So that’s how they justified it. And so we came back, with thousands waiting who preceded us in applying for that passage.So don’t think in terms of influencing anyone in this world. Leave them alone. Don’t influence your boss…forget him! He could die tonight, do you know that? He could drop dead right now. So what?—doesn’t matter. Don’t influence anyone. Don’t think of it. Think only in terms of clarity of form. The minute you draw a line you are encompassing energy. Anything in this world without an outline means nothing. Well now, you just draw your outline and get all in it, as much as you can. But get a clear, clear picture. I’m giving a party tonight, I am sitting at my table, my friends are present, one has been promoted and this is in his honor. As we sit down I raise my glass to toast him and tell all of my friends he is now promoted to a certain point. That would imply greater responsibility, more money, and I am toasting it. Stick to that and don’t really care who is influenced to bring it to pass.
Forget all influence. The minute you think in terms of influence, you’re taking this most fantastic miracle in the world and perverting it, bringing it down to so-called magic. Working against this, working against that, and I’m going to work against this one because she’s working black magic, and doing this because he doesn’t want me. All that is nonsense! Forget all the people in the world. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, so forget everyone in this world. Not one person in this world has any power to hold you back or to promote you. You are self-promoted or self-held back. Just simply think in terms of clarity of form.
Now listen to these words of Blake, “If the Spectator could enter into these images.” Now listen to these words carefully, “enter into,” not observe them. “If the Spectator could enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could make a friend and a companion of any one of these images of wonder, then he would rise from the grave, then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy” (Vis. Last Judg.). If he could only enter into one of these images in his Imagination…alright, so I want to be, and let’s say in New York. Well now, I can see one of a dozen hotels that I lived in and entered. Now, could I enter into one of these images in my Imagination? How would I do it? Approach it on the fiery chariot of my contemplative thought. So I contemplate it. I contemplate it and then I enter it. Well, how will I know that I’m in it, because physically I’m here. I think…when I think I am in it, I think of this place. Well, if I see it as I now see it, I am not in New York City. I must see it as I would see it were I in New York City. Where would it be? 3,000 miles to the west of me, that’s where it would be. If I enter into that image in my contemplative thought, I will see every part of the world related to that place that I have entered.
So if the Spectator could enter into these images in his contemplative thought…so I enter the image…then I will arise from the grave. What grave? This is my grave; I’m always here in a grave. When man enters the world of flesh, it’s eternal death. So I rise from it, leave it behind me for a moment, and go into that place, and then view the world from it as though it were true. Then I will not only rise from the grave, I will meet my Lord in the air. Who’s my Lord?—I AM. I’ll meet my Lord in the air and I’ll be happy. Am I not happy in what I am doing? Well, that’s what he’s telling us and that is his Vision of the Last Judgment, how man actually does these things. So you and I can actually enter into the state desired, dwell in that state as though it were true, and, may I tell you, no power in this world can stop it! It can’t stop it from becoming a fact in the world. You don’t influence anyone deliberately, but you influence everyone. As Sir James Jeans said, “A man on this planet cannot raise a hand without influencing the farthest star in the world.” It is this unified form.
And so, you practice it and you prove it, and you can go from wherever you are to wherever you want to be if you stop trying to influence people to help you. Forget them!They’ll have to…they’ll have to aid. Not aid in the sense that they’re doing you a favor; they’ve got to do what they do because you’ve done what you did. You dare to assume that you are…and you name it…and then everyone must play the part, but everyone. Why?—because it’s yourself pushed out.
I played the part in my friend’s dream. Now in this dream of hers she mentioned another, she said, “I was on my way to my friend Marge. I went with Sharon and Jan and others”—others she did mention by name. She said, “Sharon, Jan and others, we’re all on the way to Marge. Marge had a gold necklace and a gold disk, and on it was carved a golden man. On the way to Marge’s house, suddenly Sharon said, ‘I’ve lost my necklace.’ She hadn’t lost the necklace; she lost the disk on which was carved the golden man. She held the chain in her hand.” Then my friend, who wrote the letter, said, “I started to dig to find where she had lost it.” Now bear in mind what I told you earlier when she first had the first dream: children said to her when she found a watch, “You have found a treasure.” Now she is finding as she digs she finds a watch, she finds two watches, she finds three, and there are multiple watches that she is finding. A watch was told her in the beginning by the children—for whenever vision breaks forth into speech, the presence of Deity has been established. So the child is the voice of God telling her that is the symbol of a treasure, you’ve found a treasure. Now she is finding treasure after treasure after treasure…that’s what she’s finding.
What is the treasure? She’s finding Christ. It was a gold chain, a gold disk on which was actually engraved a golden man. God is the wisdom of God and Christ is defined in scripture as the wisdom of God (1 Cor.1:24). She is finding the wisdom of God. So all the revelations that came to her—although she could not bring it back through her conscious reasoning mind when I to her was the teacher revealing it—was simply all within herself. She heard it all. She heard it all, she knows it in the depths of herself, and it’s slowly coming to the surface. She knows when I told her, which she conjured, well, she conjured me, it’s ego-centric, that’s what a dream is. And so when she conjured me and I am telling her that my name is Friday, the God of love, I am telling, “All that I’m telling you now is true, for the God of love cannot lie”…that’s what I’m telling her. So all that she is hearing though she hasn’t brought it to the surface of her being, it is coming. And she isn’t far from the ultimate revelation of the birth from above. She is not.
All of this is happening to all who are coming here. So really, what does it matter? The world goes on and it plays its numberless parts, and it wants more and more of things that vanish. Tonight they’re fighting for the presidency. He hasn’t yet gone, he isn’t dead, haven’t buried him yet, but they’re all trying to bury him for the next election…fighting like mad for something that passes away…means nothing. “Do not lay up treasures on earth,” you are told, “where thieves will take it and the moth will corrupt, but lay it up in heaven where no one can take it from you” (Mat. 6:19).The treasures of earth are really loans, loans that at any moment can be withdrawn, but the treasures of heaven are forever.And she has found these treasures in the instruction that she feels I gave her, for really I am in her. She conjured me and by revealing my name to her, she knew that teacher could only give her truth for he is the God of love, having been incorporated into the body of love. But it’s not Neville the man she knows here…it’s the Neville in herself that she conjured and lifted up and revealed to her…for, believe it, every dream is ego-centric.
So if what I tell you is true, when you conjure me I must be presented to you in the form of revealed truth. And if God is love—and I know it from my personal experience—to confirm scripture which says God is love in the 1st Epistle of John (4:8), well then, when I told her “Friday,” I’m telling her…then when she confirms it, “Oh, yes, that means, ‘O my darling,’” the one who was pierced. And when they look upon the one that they pierced, they will weep as one who weeps for an only child; for I am that one who was pierced, and you, too, but you don’t know it yet. Only one being was pierced, and that one being is Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ is the true identity of everyone; the true identity of every being in the world is Jesus Christ. Well, if he was pierced and he’s the true identity of everyone and he’s within me, well the, I’m pierced. So, as Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). And so, the crucifixion is over, for I have been crucified with Christ; but the resurrection is taking place, and each in his own wonderful time.
When Benny came home the other night and told me again the story of the child, I can’t tell you Bill’s reaction and thrill and mine as we sat there. He said, “Oh, Neville, when I saw those rosy cheeks.” Well, you know how dark Benny is…well, he saw these rosy cheeks when he lifted that infant wrapped in swaddling clothes…“and those rosy cheeks.” Then he used not only one by many expressions of endearment. He also used “O my darling.” It is that that takes place in the heart of man when he brings out of himself the sign of his own birth. So pigment on earth means nothing. The eternal stories are true.
I could paint you a word picture of the Father. He’s best described in Daniel, but never described in pictures. Not even Blake has painted him. And I so love Blake for all that he’s done. That is not the Ancient of Days—it is something entirely different. And David, yes, the great artists have tried to paint David and sculpt David—that’s not David. No human could actually form David, he’s so beautiful. And he is going to see David! So when Benny sees him, Benny with that dark, dark pigment is going to look right into the eyes of the bluest eyes and the blondest hair and the fairest skin he has ever seen. And that is David. When you look into the face of the Father, he is going to see, if he hasn’t already seen, that face. And these skins mean nothing. In my own case, I change every year like a lizard. I go into the sun and get darker and darker and darker, and then winter comes and all of a sudden I am pale and look miserable. So the same thing…these are only pigments meaning nothing.
But when he sat in that chair and as we had a couple of Martinis—this was before his second, so it was not any influence—and when Benny said, “Oh, Neville, when I looked upon those rosy cheeks, and I held that babe in my arms, and I embraced it!” And he used the words, “my son, my sweetheart, O my darling.” Then it vanished, leaving only a portrait of itself in his hand. You see, you are so unique. The drama although it’s the same drama it comes differently…like an artist playing the part of Hamlet. No two actors play Hamlet alike. I have seen it a dozen times on Broadway, at least a dozen times, by different artists, and no two played it alike, but it’s the same Hamlet. And so we bring forth the child in different manners. His was like an explosion out of his head, like a star. My friend Bob, it came popping out of his head too but right into his hand as he held the child. So these things happen uniquely because we are unique, no two are alike. So it has to be something different in the same story.
And that’s how Benny got…I can only say to Benny, the 6th of March, and I’m all ears waiting. Approximately within the area of the 6th of March when David stands before him, that beautiful David, and calls him Father. He will know it…there’s no doubt in his mind as to the relationship. Therefore, he and I are brothers. If he and I walked down this street today, they would think we could not be from the same father; but they wouldn’t know that we are the Father. If we walked through certain areas of prejudice today, they’d say, “What are we doing together?” He could take me to Harlem and if they would rush him to hurt me, he would protect me. If I take him into other areas, certain restricted areas, they’d rush me to kill me because I brought him in. Yet here the same being came in. There aren’t two; we are the Father…brought forth the same child, and in five months he’s going to bring forth my son; therefore he can’t bring forth my son unless he is my very being. And this is this fabulous world in which we live.
So I ask you tonight to just simply take this wonderful premise “Imagining creates reality,” go out and believe it. Don’t try to influence anyone in this world. The world reflects what we are doing. Put all of your energies upon clarity of form. Alright, if I occupied a certain desk, would that mean that I am now filling a certain position? Occupy that desk! Get it clear in my mind’s eye and as Blake said, “If the Spectator could enter into this image in his Imagination”…well, enter it! How do I know I’m in it? Just think of the world, and I’ll think of the world and see it as I would see it were I in this state. If I am in this state, I would have to see the world in a certain manner. Well then, do it! Now don’t complain after you’ve done it that “originally I imagined it.” I will tell you if you say it to me then what are you doing now remembering and not still imagining!
Now let us go into the Silence.
The core theme of Neville’s lecture is that the human imagination is the sole efficacious creative force in manifesting reality. He underscores the imaginal act as the cause and external circumstances as its effects, cautioning against the distracting desire to influence others. This shift from recollection to active imagining highlights the present tense of consciousness, anchored by the divine name “I AM,” to sustain and bring into existence the desired state.
Emphasizing clarity of form, Goddard instructs practitioners to conceive detailed mental scenes—such as hosting a celebratory party—and to inhabit them fully. By focusing on sensory specifics and the end result rather than interpersonal dynamics, the imaginal act becomes a self-contained creative event. The lecture dismantles the illusion that external authorities or powerful individuals dictate outcomes, reminding students that all conditions are self-generated.
The lecture weaves potent scriptural and mystical references, invoking the biblical name “I AM” and the Hebrew term Yachiyd to reveal the unity of the individual with the divine. He interprets his dream visitors, the symbol of Friday, and Blake’s poetic imagery to illustrate how divine wisdom is encoded in inner visions. These passages underscore that dream content is ego-centric yet simultaneously a conduit for higher revelation, affirming that Christ consciousness resides within each person.
Case studies of dream sequences serve as experiential validation, illustrating how subconscious revelations convey profound truths beyond the reach of conscious memory. Through metaphors—children finding a watch, gold seals with engraved figures, and peeled heads—Neville interprets these nocturnal dramas as symbolic lessons in self-recognition and spiritual awakening. Each dream episode confirms that psychic impressions are genuine communications from the depths of the individual soul.
Practically, the lecture advocates for meditative repetition, black-screen listening, and mental rehearsal to fortify the clarity of form. By persistently dwelling in chosen imaginal states and regarding the body of phenomena as a reflection of inner states, students learn to govern their world from within, dissolving the illusion of external resistance. This disciplined imaginative practice, tested daily, becomes the bridge between the unseen mental construct and manifest reality.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
