At the start of his lecture Neville Goddard presents the theme “It Is Within,” asserting that all external reality is a manifestation of one’s inner imagination. He illustrates this principle through a vivid subway dream he shared with his friend David, demonstrating experiential proof that what appears objective is actually subjective. Drawing on William Blake’s poetry and biblical passages such as Mark 9:37 and Luke 17:21, Goddard explains how the Christ child symbolizes the divine potential within each person. He guides listeners in using conscious imaginal acts to bring desired outcomes into objective reality, emphasizing the role of belief and self-persuasion. In a concluding question and answer session, he addresses the continuity of consciousness after death and reassures that life is an unbroken spiritual journey. Goddard’s lecture blends poetic, scriptural, and psychological insights to empower individuals to claim their inherent divinity and creative power.
Tonight’s subject is “It is Within.” As we are told, the kingdom of God is within you and the kingdom of God contains all; there is nothing outside of the kingdom. These words were addressed to us individually. You mean that you seated here, a small little person, within a room much bigger than yourself, and the room but a little aspect of a bigger building, and this tiny little spot on the earth, and then you go out in this fabulous world, and I’m addressing you, and you contain the whole? I mean that seriously. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jer., Plt.71).
Let me share with you an experience which I am convinced everyone must have, for I can’t see how I can persuade anyone that what I have just told you is true.; it can only come to the individual by an experience. I can’t for one moment believe I could take this platform forever and persuade others that all that they behold which seems so real and so objective is really within them. But an experience could do it. So let me share with you an experience. I found myself on a crowded subway, crowded more so than the little eggs in a shad roe. If you’ve ever had a shad roe, or the roe of a sturgeon, or the dolphin, and these numberless little dots, each a potential fish, whether it be the dolphin or the shad or whatever it would be. And the subway, many, many cars, and the train is as long as the station would allow, and every car as crowded as the little eggs of the shad roe.
But when I say crowded, I mean crowded with people. And here are these perfectly lovely ladies, beautifully gowned. I could hardly believe they were on their way to work…they seemed that they must be on their way to some fashion display, beautifully gowned! I turned to my friend David, (David Morton who’s here tonight) and I said, “Can you believe that all this is within us?” How could I persuade anyone in this world that all this, not only all these lovely ladies beautifully gowned, but here is now the conductor trying to get through and he can’t, it’s too crowded. He’s screaming to the people pushed against the doors to be careful, because there could be an accident. The doors would simply fly open by the mere pressure. But they couldn’t help it, it was simply crowded. David agreed with me that it’s almost impossible if not completely impossible to persuade oneself that this could be the out-picturing of one’s inner activity. But how to persuade another that all that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in one’s own wonderful human Imagination? And so we agreed that in spite of Blake’s wonderful vision that nothing could really reveal it to man but an experience. That’s all that could do it.
Then came that moment when David and I got off the car. He had a big letter envelope and in it he had many letters, and he asked me to post them for him, so he gave me the letters. Then that meant that we would simply separate and go our separate ways, he to some other place, and I either to the post office or to some mailbox and post these letters for him. I took the letters and I didn’t read the addresses, but I simply looked at them to see if they were properly, I would say, stamped. Well, I was satisfied that they were stamped. As I turned to him and promised him I would mail them, I awoke and here I am on my bed.
And that experience was just as real as this experience right here now. Was it not all within me—-this entire train, as many cars as the station would hold, each car crowded to the gunnels? And here is David agreeing with me as we quoted Blake—we quoted Blake from beginning to end-—he and I agreed that not only we couldn’t persuade ourselves of the reality of something inside, for everything seemed real on the outside. Here are these lovely ladies, beautifully gowned, everything beautifully done, everything perfect. I touched him, I got his letters; that was something objective to me. And then, we agreed that not a thing in this world could truly convince us of the reality of the statement of Blake that “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” So there I stood…taking his letters. I waved to him as he departed towards his place and I toward the mailing of his letters; and holding these letters, seemingly, I awoke. I woke on my bed. That happened yesterday morning.
So here, a perfectly wonderful experience of the reality of all within, it isn’t without at all. As Blake tells us, “I am in you. In your bosoms I reside, and you in me. I in you and you in me, mutual in love divine. But the weary traveler could not believe it and so he turned down the valleys dark.” What man will believe it? So you tell a man I’ll show you how to try to prove it…and you see what isn’t there to be seen, and you look at it, it isn’t there, but in your Imagination you can see it. And you persuade yourself of the reality of what you’re seeing in your Imagination, and to the degree that you are self-persuaded of the reality of what you are imagining it will take on an objective form. Well, it may take it on in twenty-four hours or two years if you really believe in the reality of what you are imagining. Well, when it takes on that objective form and becomes an objective fact, between your imaginal act and the objective fact so many things happen that seem to you outside of yourself and so natural and so real that it’s outside, you can’t relate it to your imaginal act. And so, you deny your own harvest. You can’t believe that what you’re doing there, what you now see on the outside, is in any way related to what you did on the inside. Yet all ends run true to origins, and you and I today are bearing the fruit of some forgotten blossom time. We don’t remember it.
What child in this world did not as a little child—-I know I did—-dream noble dreams of saving people, of doing all kinds of things? Just running in…if you were born, as I was, on a little farm—-they wouldn’t call it a farm in Barbados—-but to me it was a farm because we had all the animals. And so we had bulls and we had stallions and we had these things and I would see them breeding. Then we knew the power of these beasts, and I entertained the thought of one day saving someone from the bull, or from the stallion, where some little girl got away and found herself in the stall, and instead of being injured I would just simply take that beast by its horns or take the stallion by the halter and then save her. Didn’t you do that? Everyone does that. These so-called dreams of childhood they lead us into other things in our world. So I don’t go out and take a bull by the head, or the stallion, but you go out and take other things equally powerful and divert them from some disaster in this world.
All these go back to these childhood dreams, where man as a little child dreams. A little girl dreams and she changes her name. So her name is Miss Brown, Mary Brown, but she can’t be Miss Brown if she wants to be married for the rest of her life. She wants to be married, so she writes all kinds of names next to her name. So she loses herself in this wonderful act of writing another name and trying to feel what it would be like if I were Mrs. John or Mrs. something else. All this…and you think it silly.
I can see my mother now coming over my shoulder when we were all around…and this is a way back, I was born in 1905…and we didn’t really study, but we had to appear as though we did. So there were nine brothers and a sister and she would come occasionally over our shoulder and wonder what we were doing. This night in question, she came over my shoulder, she read, she said, “Neville, what are you doing?” I couldn’t deny it, there it was. She picked up the paper and I’d just written out “I wonder who’s kissing her now?” Well, that was my homework…I was dreaming of something entirely outside of that world. And so, it was a piece of the time, and I simply heard it, loved the little thought behind it, and I wondered, “Who is kissing her now?” Well, mother smiled for a moment…she didn’t smile in my presence, but she went to the veranda and told my father what I had just written out. They both had a hearty laugh over that statement. All that was within me, it wasn’t on…at least, I wrote it on the paper.
What I’m getting at it this. David and I, yesterday morning…but David was in me. He’s here physically tonight, objective to my presence, and yet yesterday morning he was as real as he is now sitting in this room. And he and I agreed that we can’t become self-persuaded by argument; we can only become persuaded by an experience. And it will take an experience of God in man to reveal the statement of Blake that “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” We are inwoven into these cruel roots of the brain to die the death of six thousand years. At the very end, after we have died the death of six thousand years, we will come out and we will be God himself. That God is each man and each man is that very God, but he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t know it now. So when we’re told, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), how can man looking out not only on this little world of ours but into the heavens—-you mean the sun, the planets, the moon and all of the galaxies beyond the wildest dream of man—-all are contained within me? It must be true if I am God. But you mean that everything in the world, all the galaxies, I don’t need some little airship to take me there, it’s all contained with me? It’s the most fantastic concept in the world…and yet it is true.
Now let me share with you an experience. We read in the story in the 9th chapter of the Book of Mark: “And then he took the little child into his arms, embraced him in his arms, and he said to them, ‘Whoever receives such a one as this little child receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but receives him who sent me’” (verse 37). Now you look up the word “child” and it means “an infant”—-not a little thing that could walk, not articulate—-it’s the inarticulate little child, an infant. It also means “a term of endearment,” that’s what it means. Not only is it a little infant, but it’s a term of endearment.
Now, just as I had this experience yesterday morning think of the entire story of Jesus Christ as such an experience, where it is only an acted parable; that every act of Jesus Christ is an act of truth that etches itself upon the soul of man. This is something that you experience in the depth of your soul in what I would say now was a subjective state—-the whole thing was dramatized. So an infant was placed …just like a story on a stage…and an infant was taken and put in the midst of you. Then you were told one day you will receive it in your arms and you will express the most wonderful feeling of endearment for that which is placed in your arms. When it happens, you will know you not only receive me, the little child, but you received him who sent me. Who is it?—-God the Father. So you receive God the Father with that act.
So I say, subjectivity and objectivity are wholly determined for the individual by the level on which the individual’s consciousness is focused. Here it is focused here and this seems so real. The experience of yesterday morning is now subjective and I recall it as I would a dream; but when it was happening, it was as real as this moment now. That was to me objective and everything else was subjective…only when I shifted consciousness. And instead of posting the letters, as he gave them to me he said, “Take these letters and post them for me.” So I started to post them for him, and we parted, he his way, and I my way. My way was to another level of consciousness. So I came back here to discover that was subjective but a moment before it was objective; and this, if I had remembered it, it would have been relative to it, it would have been subjective.
So the story of Jesus Christ was told man in the depth of his soul. And the little infant was placed in his midst and he was told, the day will come you’ll take it in your hands at the end of the journey. When you take it in your hands, you will speak to it in the most endearing terms. For the word child not only means “infant,” this word, there are seven words used in the Greek for child, but this one is “the tiniest of tiny, inarticulate, the infant.” You’ll find it in your Concordance, and here not only “infant” but the most “endearing of terms.” If you use the same term that I did, you will say, “How is my sweetheart?” You will hold it in your hands, wrapped in its swaddling clothes, and you will ask it, “How is my sweetheart?” And then you will know who you are, for you’re told in this 9th chapter of Mark that after you hold it in your hands and you embrace it, you will know you have received me, but not me but him who sent me, for he’s always the little child. So Jesus Christ must always be spoken of and thought of as the little child, the symbol of your own entrance into the kingdom of God. But your entrance into the kingdom of God is accompanied with the power of God. So you received not only me, the little child, but received him who sent me. Well, who sent me?—-God the Father. And so you will know this entire mystery: The whole vast world is within you. It appears without, but it really isn’t without at all. The so-called center, yes, they call it the selfish center, that’s without; but the circumference, that which includes all things, that’s within.
Now try it, try it this night. You can’t quite grasp it until something similar happens to you. But you can try it and prove it. Well, I want to be…and you name it. I want to be bigger in my profession, I want to hold a bigger job, make more money, I want to live in a better place…you name it. I say everything is within you. Well, now see it as you would see it were it true, and bring someone who seemingly now exists without—but they don’t, really, they all exist within—-bring them into your mind’s eye and let them witness this accomplishment. Bring everyone who would actually rejoice with you were it true. So you bring them in your mind’s eye and you talk with them inwardly as though you talked with them outwardly. Believe in the reality of this imaginal act. This assemblage is implying something, and whatever the assemblage implies it will create. So you take this wonderful assemblage of friend or friends and then their conversation, whatever that conversation would imply, but you make it, you control it, and you make it imply the fulfillment of your desire.
When it comes to pass and it is objectified on the screen of space, you may forget what you did. It’s going to happen so naturally and so normally you may not relate it to what you’ve done. But try to remember what you do that you may know that the whole vast world is within you. Little as you are, small as you are judged by these standards, you contain the whole vast world. As Jeans says, “Having studied the stars”—-he was a great astrophysicist—-“I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is nothing more than an infinite mind and we are but brain cells in the mind of the dreamer.” Here is an astrophysicist, Sir James Jeans.
Well, I’ll tell you, you are God. Every being in this world is God, very God, and contains within himself everything in this world…but he doesn’t know it. As Blake said, “It takes six thousand years of this experience of horror, inwoven into the cruel roots of the tree of life,” and the tree of life is in your own brain. For as he also said, “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through nature to find this tree, but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain.” This tree is turned down into generation. The day will come you’ll hold that little child, that infant, and you will speak some endearing term to him, and soon thereafter the tree will turn up. All that went down into generation will turn up into regeneration, and start to grow beyond the wildest dream of man. And it’s you.
On this level it doesn’t make sense, but I tell you, it is true. Every word that I’m telling you this night is true. For when David said to me…and it was so real…we’re discussing Blake and quoting him, word for word. Not just Jerusalem, but quoting him as he wrote in his Milton, as he wrote in all his poems, and we knew it intimately. Then I said to David, “How can one…look at these beautiful ladies, look at them, each more beautiful than the other, and all lovely, and yet so crowded that you couldn’t move…and yet you could see exactly what they were wearing. It seemed strange…every one was apart and yet the train and the cars so crowded that the conductor, who couldn’t get through, is calling on us to please not push any more towards the door because some accident could take place. And David and I are discussing the beauty of these women, and how could I believe this one here that I could touch—-I wouldn’t touch her, I touched David, I wouldn’t touch these lovely ladies, I just looked at them—-how could I believe that she is in me? And he agreed with me, you can’t. How could I be persuaded that everything that I am seeing now is actually taking place within me? We both agreed that would be an impossible thing. But, if impossible to us, how would I persuade another that it’s taking place in them? That, we gave up completely. And then he gave me his letters, I departed from him to wake to discover how true Blake was. Was it not all within me? Did not everything that I see take place in me? So you come back and you put him to the test. So when I came back into this world, the world in which I woke, which is this world was no more real than that world from which I had just departed. There was a change of consciousness from one level to another. That world that to me when I was on it was objective faded and became subjective; and this world to which I returned, which was relative to it subjective, became objective.
Now, if it is true that everything that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination, and all these things that seem so real are but shadows, then I can throw a shadow can’t I if I know who the light is. He said, “I am the light of the world.” If I am the light of the world, all I need is an object to cast a shadow. But he doesn’t stop there, he said, “We are the light of the world.” We are the light of the world. So all I need is simply an object or a combination of objects which would imply something, and being the light I can cast a shadow and throw it on the screen of space. Well then, try it. All you have to do is simply test it, just try it. So bring into my mind’s eye that which would imply the fulfillment of my dream either for myself or for another. Then having seen it clearly in my mind’s eye, let me breathe it in just as though it were true, and let me feel the thrill of fulfillment, of accomplishment. And just let it rest. See if it doesn’t objectify itself on this level.
For you and I are living on this level most of the time. At least two-thirds of our life we are on this level; one-third we live in an entirely different level, we call it sleep. And everyone has to sleep one-third of his life on earth. Just imagine a man lives ninety years, like Churchill, and thirty years of his life was lived in sleep. We know that. Knowing the old boy as I have read about him, the chances are he spent more than thirty years in sleep. Forget the early days when he spent eighteen, nineteen hours in sleep. But he made it a habit of going to bed in the afternoon, taking off all of his clothes, and actually retiring for sleep, and would spend three hours in a state of unconsciousness. He was told it revived him. Well, take another three hours of seven days a week out of that and then you will see maybe he spent of his ninety years, maybe he had forty years of his life in sleep…who knows.
But I will say to all here, the difference between one level and the other is only determined by the level on which our consciousness is focused. I was focused so clearly on that level and David was on that level. Well, David was in me. He can’t get away from me, not in eternity. You can’t get away from me. So what I want to bring out now is this: If you reside in my bosom (“within my bosom you reside”) and I reside in you, may I tell you, I have awakened from the dream of life but I reside in you, so in you one aspect of your being has awakened from the dream of life. I reside in you, you reside in me. I have held the Christ child in my hands. I expressed that wonderful endearing expression, “How is my sweetheart?” and this heavenly smile broke upon its face, in fulfillment of the 9th chapter of the Book of Mark. Well, I reside in you; I have experienced it, so in you, though you may be totally unaware of it, there’s an aspect of your being that has held the Christ child. You are told that he who holds me holds not me but him who sent me. And the purpose of it all is that God’s purpose is to give himself to man, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. That’s the purpose.
So “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). That’s what we’re told. Look upon the entire story of God made man, called Jesus Christ, as an acted parable. That everything that’s said about him, everything he states in scripture that is recorded, look upon it as an acted truth; which because it took place in the depth of the soul of man is being etched deeply, indelibly upon the soul of man. Man goes on denying preexistence, denying the truth of scripture, and then one day this that is etched upon him begins to unfold and blossom, and then bursts into flower within him.
So I tell you, every word of the story of Jesus Christ is true. I’ve experienced it. Every word of it is true. Forget the crucifixion; you have already been crucified with Jesus Christ. As you’re told, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). And so, you have been crucified with God in a death like his and you shall rise with God in a resurrection like his. When you rise, the symbol of your rising is the Christ child. So always think of him as the Christ child. So when you read the story of a man…don’t think of a man, always think of Jesus Christ as the little child, that’s the child.
If a man played the part and took from the crowd a little infant and set it in the midst and then tells the story…now here he tells a story to the little child, puts it in the midst, and then he takes a little child into his arms and embraces the child, and makes the statement, “Whoever receives such one, the little child, receives me; yet he who receives me, receives me not but receives him who sent me.” You receive God himself when you touch and hold the little child; for that’s the eternal Christ, not any man that walks the face of this earth at all. For when you see him, you will know him. You know why you will know him?—because you are like him. “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall know him, for we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). If you‘re not like him, then you haven’t seen him, haven’t seen him at all. It’s just like you, only raised to the nth degree of beauty, of majesty, of a strength of character that you could not conceive that you on this level could ever attain. But I tell you, it’s all true, every word of it is true.
So think this night of you seated…maybe you’re unemployed, maybe you have debts, maybe you have, well, all kinds of problems…and the whole vast world is contained within you. But the whole vast world, not some little aspects of it. The kingdom of God is within you; it contains all. And if there are three billion walking the face of the earth today, and if tens of billions will walk tomorrow, all are contained in you. But everything is contained within you—-all the races, all the nations, all the continents, the mountains, the seas, the rivers, all are human, and it’s all you. So don’t think for one little moment you’re a tiny little thing. And if I could persuade you this night to assume greatness…far greater is it to be conceited than to have a little tiny stupid opinion of yourself. You’re God! God became man that man may become God (Phil. 2:5). Let no one tell you that you must walk in some stupid humble way, like a worm. God became man in the most literal sense of the word, and becoming man God contains all. You contain all!
With whom did I talk yesterday morning? It was about six thirty. Well, David teaches at UCLA, the chances are he was awake, making himself a cup of coffee, getting things done. He has a house to take care of, he has lessons to get together because he has a class, a very large class, waiting for him, he has all of these things to get together. He might have been up at six, I don’t know. I got up at six thirty right on the heels of this experience. He was just as real there as he is tonight, as he ever has been in my world. He talked with the same tone. He and I are quoting, quoting, quoting one after the other, all Blake. We’re in agreement, how could I persuade myself that all of this is within me? How could I ever think for one moment these beautiful ladies, all completely lovely…like going to some fashion display…I could hardly believe they’re dressed for work, but lovely…and yet crowded…he agrees with me. Then we both agreed only an experience of God could convince us that it is within us. Then he gives me his letters, he said, “Post these for me.” And then it meant he’s going one way, I’m going the other way, we’re leaving in different directions, and so I started in a different direction from David. I’m waking, I’m on the bed; the familiar objects of the room anchor me now and locate me, and I know where I am and what level of consciousness now, with this vivid, vivid experience. Only an experience of God could convince me it is all within me. And here, he isn’t present. My wife is sleeping in her bed. I look at the watch, it’s six thirty, and for fifteen, twenty minutes I am lost in contemplation of what I have just experienced.
How true these dictated words of Blake are. For Blake made the statement in his marvelous poem Jerusalem that he is not the author. He said, I can praise it because the authors are in eternity; I am only the secretary. It came through me, dictated twelve, twenty, thirty lines at a time, and what should be the labor of a lifetime came as though it came without labor. This enormous poem of a hundred plates, that you couldn’t buy an original today for love or money. Yale has the one copy that is illustrated and colored, but you couldn’t buy it from Yale for a million dollars. They wouldn’t sell it for any price. He only left five copies behind him. One that Yale has is completely illustrated and all beautifully done in color; the others are illustrated but not colored. These are these five I would call the originals and you couldn’t buy Jerusalem for any money in this world.
He claimed he did not write it. He claimed the author was love, the spirit of love. Well, the spirit of love is God. God is love. So every morning the spirit of love would wake him, spreading his beams of love over him as he dictated the words of this mild song, and it came twelve, twenty, thirty lines at a time. These are the words: “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” Blake uses the word “bosom” as you would Imagination; they’re interchangeable. Then we’re told, “In your bosoms I exist, I reside”—-then he tells us, “Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human Imagination.” The bosom of God is simply Divine Imagination—there’s no limit to expansion—and you and I with our human Imaginations, one substance with divine imagining, we are expanding forever with divine imagining. No limit whatsoever to translucency, to expansion. We reached the limit of contraction when we became man here.
Then comes that turn around where the tree turns up and we hold the child in our hands, the symbol of the reversal of the powers within us. Then that endearing term and you call it…what you will call it, I don’t know…but I know in my own case when I took that Christ child in my hand, automatically (I can hear it now) “How is my sweetheart?”…these are the words that I used…and this heavenly smile broke upon the infant’s face. Then the whole thing dissolved and I was back on this level, this mortal level, where man cannot beget a child. He can sire one, but he can’t beget one. And yet, here I begot one.
So in the midst of us he took the child…listen to the words, “And he took a little child and placed him in the midst of them, and then he lifted the child into his arms, and then said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such as this child receives me; but he who receives me receives not me but him who sent me.’” It’s a drama…as though I went this night to the stage, to the theater, and a man came on among the people and took a little infant. And you would think a little infant and a man, that’s not it at all. He’s putting that infant in the midst of every person in this world. Who is playing the part? God is playing the part. He tells you he is the little child. I will now drop myself in you as the seed, the creative power of the universe; and in you I now place the little child, and he and I are one. God is speaking.
And the day will come and you and I one day, like Abraham, having heard the story we arose with the distance in our eyes. All the stain, stagnant nearby we brushed aside as of no importance, and then moves on through these six thousand years to that far-seen objective: the little child. So he could say, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Then, Job could say, “I’ve heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 42:5). So we rise and you can see it, the distance catches fire in the eye, and all these things mean nothing as you move on to that far-seen objective. Then comes that moment in time when suddenly it happens, it happens in you, because the whole drama is taking place within. Everyone will awake one day to hold the Christ child as his child. That Christ child is the child of God; therefore, you who hold him must be God. That’s the story: He gives you himself.
Now let us go into the Silence.
Q: I’m not sure what happens during this six thousand years, are we in suspended animation?A: No sir, you are very much alive in every moment of time. Nothing dies in God’s world; he’s a God of the living, not the dead. So what we call dead here is only departure from our level of awareness. You’re not wearing the garment, but you are restored to life and you’re playing as vital a part as you ever played in this world.Q: Do we go through the earthly experiences again or do we…?A: It’s just as real. To me, the world into which everyone goes is just like this earth here. I can’t see any difference between that world and this world. In fact, there’s only one world stretched out. It cannot be another world. It isn’t another world in spite of all the mediums of the world, in spite of all the priesthoods of the world, and all these things. I was reading this statement the other day of Pope John. Well, I read three so far…but he wrote these when he was a young man, so you’ve got to take that into consideration. He died as a very old man. This diary began when he was simply a boy of eighteen, nineteen, well, that you must consider. But he was quoting Paul, and that man dies once and then the judgment, and he wants to be prepared for that judgment. But the gospel doesn’t teach that; the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke doesn’t teach that. The question is asked by the wise men of the day, called the Sadducees, and the Sadducees said: Moses in the law said that when a man has a wife and he dies, leaving no offspring, if he has brothers the brothers should marry the wife, the widow, and raise up seed for his brother. Well, there were seven brothers; the first one died leaving no offspring; and the second took her, he died; the third; the fourth; they all took her and left no offspring; then she died. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?Now, this was a poser, because they did not believe in the resurrection. They were trying to trip him. And this is addressed to God himself. So think of Jesus Christ as God embodied revealing his plan in all of us, just think of it that way. Though you think of it as a little child, that’s the symbol of who he is, but think of him now as actually revealing his plan. So he tells the story: “The sons of this age”—-and one translation has it “they marry and are given in marriage.” A far better translation of the Greek text would be “they procreate and are born.” “But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age (an entirely different age) and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither procreate nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, for they are sons of the resurrection, sons of God” (Luke 20:27-37).
Now I say from my own personal experience, when you die here and we cannot touch you with our physical hand—-meet you psychically but can’t touch you, you’re not here, and your world seemingly has collapsed—-you are restored to life, and you are inserted into a section of the wheel of time, say, 6,000 years. It need not be the year 1972, it could be the year 3,000, something best suited for the work that is being done in you. “He who began a good work in you, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). The day of Jesus Christ is when you hold the Christ child in your hand…that’s when the work is completed. And so, he began it, he completes it. “Let us make man in our image.” The decision is God’s; it isn’t man’s. Man didn’t say, “Let us make man.” As some of our very so-called wise men have said that man had to create a God. He had to find a God, created a God. It isn’t so. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” So God started the work, God finishes it. Isn’t my responsibility at all, and when he finishes it, he gives himself to me.
He used me in a cruel way, as told in the Book of Job, the most cruel experiment that man could ever conceive of. Read it in the Book of Job and the last chapter, the 42nd chapter, tells you that God did it. All the tears that fell upon Job, all the sores, all the horrors, everything that he lost, it was done by God. Like molding something it takes pain, but in the end the reward is God himself. You are the creator molding yourself, and then you are the very one who created it. So I say to everyone here, nothing dies, but nothing dies. The little flower that blooms once blooms forever. I can pick it off my lapel, throw it away because it’s dry…it can’t die. He’s the God of the living, not of the dead. Nothing dies. But you and I are moving towards the power which is God himself. And so you drop here at the age of ninety. My mother died at the age of sixty-three and she was very, very old in appearance, for she suffered so, really suffered. My brothers protected her; we bought her all the champagne in the West Indies to keep her alive. All that she could drink for two years was champagne. She could take nothing but champagne, and we scoured all the Indies. We had, my lord, warehouses of champagne, all for mother. Not one person in Barbados could buy one little drop of champagne, the Goddard’s had it all, all for mother. So mother had champagne day after day, all through the day and night. That’s the only thing that would stay in her stomach…she was riddled with cancer. At the end of two years of keeping her, she just withered before our eyes, and mother died…sixty-three. She looked, oh, very, very old, a wizened little thing. And when I saw her, this radiant, beautiful creature, about twenty, twenty-one years old, brushing this lovely blond hair that she had. She had very, very blue eyes and very blond hair. When she appeared before me the very moment she died, she was brushing her hair, wouldn’t talk to me, just smiled and brushing her hair. She was passionately fond of flowers and there she was under this lovely arbor all in bloom, just brushing her hair.
Nothing dies. I don’t care what the world will tell you, let them tell you anything. So they open your skull and they can’t find the soul…and he thinks he’s very smart. The one who will tell me that cannot make one little…he can’t even make the hangnail that bothers me. He can take some little thing, some little plaster and make a hangnail, but he can’t grow one. There isn’t a surgeon in this world, not a doctor in this world that can grow one hair on your head, in spite of the Thomas treatment. They can’t grow it, they can’t make one hair grow. They can’t take one little nail and make it grow. They can cut it off, destroy it, but they can’t make it grow. They can’t make one little thing grow. And they are going to tell me they’ve opened up the skull and they’ve looked and there is no soul. Like Khrushchev when he said…he sent his astronauts into the air looking all over the heavens for God and they didn’t find one. He thought it extremely funny. Then two other friends of his thought he was funny and they threw him out of office, so now where he is, who knows? So all ___(??).
I tell you, the greatest book in the world is the Bible, but it’s the most misunderstood book in the world. But I speak of the God of the living. He’s not the God of the dead; he’s the God of the living. This here is called in scripture “the dead,” what we think is so animated. And we’re awakening and awakening as God, and it’s the God of the living.
Goodnight.
Neville Goddard’s lecture “It Is Within” is built upon the foundational metaphysical axiom that reality emanates from the individual’s imagination. By prefacing his discourse with Blake’s line “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within,” he anchors his argument in both poetic and philosophical tradition. This thesis challenges the listener to reconceptualize the nature of perception, suggesting that the apparent separation between self and world is merely an illusion projected by collective dreaming.
The subway anecdote serves as a powerful epistemological demonstration. Goddard and his friend David experience an extraordinary dream so vivid it rivals waking life. This firsthand example underscores the limitations of rational argument and highlights direct experience as the ultimate proof of metaphysical claims. The sudden transition from the crowded train to awakening in bed illustrates how shifts in consciousness redefine what is perceived as subjective or objective.
Intertextual references to scripture and Blake’s prophetic poetry enrich the lecture’s theological dimension. Goddard reads the story of Jesus taking the infant into his arms as an acted parable of divine regeneration, where the Christ child embodies the seed of God within humanity. The use of Mark 9:37 and Luke 17:21 reinforces his position that spiritual truths are accessible through imaginative vision rather than external ceremony, thus democratizing the sacred experience.
Practically, the lecture offers a prescriptive framework for creative visualization. Goddard instructs listeners to form mental assemblages of desired outcomes, breathe into these imaginal scenes, and feel their realization. He asserts that sustained belief and emotional conviction will coalesce into material manifestation, a process governed by the principle that “we are the light of the world” capable of casting shadows—i.e., creating experiences—from within our consciousness.
Finally, the Q&A segment extends the teaching to eschatological implications, affirming that consciousness persists beyond physical death. Goddard refutes the notion of the dead as annihilated, portraying life as an eternal cycle of inward descent into form and upward ascent to divine identity. By framing existence as an unbroken continuum of unfolding divine imagination, he offers a holistic vision that merges psychology, spirituality, and theology in service of human empowerment.
The Bible Through Neville
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