In the April 3, 1972 lecture “Justified States,” Neville Goddard teaches that God’s Kingdom is an unmerited gift and that believers are divinely justified and glorified by grace rather than by works. He presents reality as composed of infinite mental states, each fully alive in the imagination and susceptible to transformation. Using the scientific analogy of the positron moving backward in time, he illustrates how consciousness can traverse past, present, and future states. Goddard insists that individuals are not their states but immortal beings who animate those states and can therefore shift at will from poverty to abundance or from sickness to health. Through practical examples—such as envisioning someone gainfully employed to help them find a job—he demonstrates the Law and the Promise in action. Ultimately, he affirms that imagination is divine, and mastering the art of state-shifting reveals the presence of God within.
Tonight, we will take both the Law and the Promise. Just a little while on the Promise, that you may not be concerned. For I do know that so many people tell us that we must do this, that, and the other, or else. Well, you forget it.
God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. You do not earn it; it’s not your due; it’s not a reward. It’s simply a gift, unmerited. And therefore, you cannot lose it. This gift is irrevocable. So, no man can take it from you; no man can give it to you. So let no one frighten you. It is yours and it’s coming on time. And the gift is nothing less than God Himself.
When He gives you the Kingdom, He gives you Himself. For the Kingdom is not a realm. The Kingdom is a character. It’s a body. And that body is perfect. And wherever you are, clothed in that body, everything around you is perfect. No matter where you go, were you in the Petrified Forest, it would burst into the foliage. Were you in the desert, it would simply blossom like a rose. Were you in the midst of all broken members of society, they would all be in harmony. If you came into a world where they were blind, lame, halt, withered, instantly, as you glide by, eyes that were missing would come out of the nowhere and fill the empty sockets. Arms that are missing, feet missing, everything will be made perfect because you are present. That is God’s gift, which is the gift of himself, which is his body.
One day you’ll be clothed with that body. So set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ within you. That is the unfolding within you of God and his Son. And this is the hope that makes it wisdom to endure the burden of this long, dark night of time. For as Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.”
We are told we are justified by his grace. Well, justification in Scripture is divine acquittal. You are completely acquitted, no matter what you have ever done, you are acquitted. So, when we are told, “Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son; and those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.”
So, justification is simply divine acquittal, and glorification is the gift of God Himself to you, so that man then matures when he becomes his own father. So, we say, “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.” In giving us the Kingdom, He gives us himself. In giving us himself, man becomes his own father. So let no one worry you; let no one in any way suggest that you’ve got to do something to earn it, you cannot earn the Kingdom. You cannot earn this gift. This is a gift, unmerited, and it’s not your due. Were it your due, then it’s not a gift. It’s not given as a reward. You are made fit for the Kingdom, and your fitness for the Kingdom is the consequence, not the condition, of his gift. The minute he gives you himself, you are fitted for the Kingdom, and you wear the body of God. And everything in your presence, while you wear it, is made perfect. But, having given us the Promise, the Promise comes first in Scripture, then, we are told, he gave us the Law: the Law to cushion us, while we, as pilgrims, walk through the furnaces. And so, we have a Law. Man is not aware of the Law. Even the wisest of men, they’re not aware of it
I’ll go back now to 1949. I was in Milwaukee, and I gave a series of lectures on the Bible. And this couple, he was a physicist, the head physicist, of Allis-Chalmers. They’re a huge, big manufacturing firm making these turbines, sometimes bigger than this interior, and he was the head of the chemical department, where they would send waters from all over the world who bought the turbine, and he would analyze the water to discover the problem that they faced; because the water, as it came through the stream, gathered the chemicals, and then the chemicals deposited itself within the turbine; and so they would send him samples of the water, and then he would analyze the water, and then send them the solution to their problem.
Well, being a trained chemist, and the head of the department, he didn’t take issue with me, but he said: “Neville, I can’t quite go along with you because as a chemist, it’s in conflict with my training. You tell me that I can go forward in time, that you can move backward in time, that all things are, and everything is now, at this very moment. And yet you are telling me that you can make things change, and it is in conflict with my training.” We have a law known, said he, and we call it entropy. And entropy means that the past is fixed and unalterable. You cannot change it. If that could be changed, it throws everything out of kilter in my lab. I must know the past is unalterable, like braiding a lady’s hair, and the braided part, that’s fixed. The rest is the future, not yet braided. We are waiting to see how it will develop from the braided part because that is completely fixed and unalterable. And you tell me it is not; that the whole vast world exists now, past, present, and future, and that you can go into these sections of time, in a world that is finished. Well, I can’t go along with that.
That’s perfectly all right. I’m not a chemist; I’m not a scientist, so I cannot argue the point with you. I only know my visions. And I teach vision as I have actually experienced it. And I can go into these spots. I have gone into these places and the past has not passed away. And it’s fixed, as you say, but I’m quite sure one could go back and revise that past and change it.
And I can go forward into the future that I do know and set it up to walk across a bridge of incident; when I come to that point in time where I have entered, it takes on the color, the tone, and the reality that I assumed it to be when I entered that state.
Can’t be done. But he was a very honest man, as most of these fellows are; they’re trained to be honest. How else could they achieve what they do achieve in science unless they’re perfectly honest with themselves?
Well, in the month of November, I received a letter from him and he sent me the science newsletter dated October the 15th. And it was all about the positron. And the one who wrote it was Professor Richard Feynman, he was then a professor of physics at Cornell University. Twenty years later, only last year, they granted him the Nobel Prize in physics for that paper.* It took them twenty years to recognize what he said as theory back in 1949. And if I can quote it, this is it: “The positron is a wrong-way electron. It’s ‘wrong way’ in every sense of the word. It moves backward in time. It moves from where it hasn’t been and speeds to where it was an instant ago. Arriving there, it is bumped so hard its time-sense is reversed and it moves back to where it hasn’t been.”
Now that is not Neville speaking; that is Professor Feynman. For that, he got the Nobel Prize last year. He said: “It’s not only backward in that sense, but even its charge is backward. It’s a positron; it’s positive and not negative. And yet it is an electron.”
When they first observed it or rather had it as theory, they did not want to admit it, but yet it fitted in with Einstein’s theory, mathematically, so they had to in some way accept it, but no one had ever photographed it. Then came someone who photographed it in their studies of the cosmic rays, and here it was the actual positron. It seemed as though two were developed at a certain point. And it wasn’t, said he. That one coming back, which was the positron, should, if it is bounced, it should be deflected and continue on its course, but deflected course. On the other hand, if it’s bounced so hard, it’s not deflected; it’s reversed and moves forward in a normal manner to where it hasn’t been.
Well, I told him that I was sitting at home, and I would go into a section of time, even this year, for instance. This is now only April. I put myself in Christmas. I would feel the stores are all dressed for Christmas. I could hear the music of Christmas, all the carols. I’d walk through Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, go into Best, go into the other, and I would feel all that I would feel if it were true that it’s Christmas, that it’s the month of Christmas. And then when I feel that it’s all Christmas, then I would feel that things are as I desire them to be back in the month, say, of March or July, which was certainly not Christmas season. So, take a hot, hot day in July, and I’m feeling it to be cold, and snow on the ground, and all the dressings for Christmas. And then I would open my eyes, and bounce back, and shock myself because it seems so real to me that, when I came back and opened my eyes upon July, and it’s hot, I thought, now, are you kidding yourself? No, when I went forward in time quite normally, waiting out the days, the months to the month of December, things happened as I actually had assumed that they would. I went forward and determined, predetermined, what would happen.
Well, when he sent me this, he wrote a sweet, lovely letter saying, Neville, I must confess: I didn’t see it; no one saw it until Professor Feynman in his lab discovered this. But he discovered it by theory, and you tell me you know it by vision. You’re not a scientist, and yet all that you said to me—which I could not believe, and even this moment it’s difficult for me to believe, here comes the great professor, a theoretical physicist, and he is the one who wrote this paper. For that, he got the Nobel Prize last year. He worked on our atomic bomb; he worked on the hydrogen bomb. Then he asked the government to relieve him of the secrecy imposed upon him because of his position, and he came here to Caltech and taught at Caltech: theoretical physics. He said I want the freedom of imagination. I didn’t want to be confined with the secrets of government so that I could not express myself. Leave me alone, all in theory. So, he goes blindly on with his mathematics and his theory, bringing out these concepts, all theory.
Well, mine is not theory. I go into these states. Now, look at it this way: see the whole vast world as infinite states, all states. If they are all states, and you are an immortal being, you are not a state; you are immortal, you enter a state and the state becomes alive. Therefore, you are not to blame if you enter a state unwittingly, and it’s a horrible state. Man, not knowing, yet you are in a state; they condemn you. But you have to express the contents of that state.
If you enter the state of poverty, you have to experience poverty. If you remain in it, you must go and drink that to the very last drop: the dregs of that cup. If you go into any state and remain in that state, you are going to drink it to the very last drop. But you can get out of a state. You don’t have to remain in it if you know it’s a state. If you don’t know it’s a state, you identify yourself with the state and think that you’re it. Man has identified himself with this little body, and he thinks he is it.So, the day comes he has to discard it because he’s worn it out. And he discards it; all his friends are crying to think he died. He can’t die. He is an immortal being who wore a garment of flesh, flesh and blood. That same being who goes into states: remaining in a state, and the state has to be expressed by him who resurrected the state. For I am the resurrection and the life of that state.
Now, you can change an individual, with or without his consent, if you so desire. Here is a story of a friend of mine. I persuaded him to give up his job here.* I knew he was a single man, and he would like to do what I am doing. So, I said, San Francisco, is wide open. I only go there once a year for four weeks at a time. Now I have reduced it to two weeks at a time. But I used to go, in the early years, for four weeks. I said they need someone badly who knows this law. You can’t teach the Promise because you do not know it. You can tell it, but from hearsay, because you have not experienced the Promise. But you do know the Law. And you are presentable; you are a gentleman; you go up there, I will not give you any money, but I will give you my mailing list of five hundred; it’s a live list, and you send out my list and when I go, I will tell them that I allowed you to have my list, and I will get behind you in that manner, but not in any other way. You’ve got to go on faith.
Well, he quit his job here, he has seniority of eight years in the place that he worked. He goes up to San Francisco, and he made arrangements to open. He had a little dog, a lovely little dog, and he was walking this dog one afternoon before he opened, and a man came over and greeted him and said, what a nice little dog you have. And then after the usual greetings, he said, can you help me out? I haven’t eaten today. I’m out of work. And my friend said, no. I have no money, but I will do what I can, but I can’t give you any money. The man couldn’t understand that you can’t give me money; what else could you do?
My friend did not move one step after he said “no” to the request. The man went off. He remained there until he imagined that man in his presence gainfully employed, happy in the job, and standing on his own feet. That was taking the story in the book of Acts: when a man came to John and Peter, and he could not stand on his own feet, and he was begging at the temple door. And Peter said gold and silver have I not for thee, but such as I have, give I unto you. Rise and walk, and he rose and walked. It doesn’t mean a cripple jumped up and walked. That’s an entirely different structure that I do know is possible when you wear the garment of God. You couldn’t come into the presence of anyone as a cripple. The minute you came by, he ceases to be a cripple. If he has no feet, feet come and fill the sockets. If he’s blind, they come in and fill the sockets, and he is not blind. And you do nothing to do it. No compassion, you simply are so perfect that nothing imperfect can remain in your presence. But in this case, on this level, no one is going to actually jump up from the crippled state and start walking. But he takes a man who is crippled, who is standing on other peoples’ feet by begging from them.
Well, a month later, he was walking his dog and he saw this man and he crossed the street, the man crossed the street and came over to him. He said I don’t suppose you remember me. He said, “Oh, yes, I do. I remember you, just about a month ago, that you asked me for money.” And he said, “Yes, and I want to thank you for not giving it to me and extended his hand to my friend. He said, had you given me the money, I today would be asking you for money. Because you did not give me, I was so embarrassed and so annoyed with myself that I put myself in that position, I went out the very next day and I got a job, a good job; it pays well, and it has a promise of growth. And I am very happy in the job. So again, let me thank you for not giving me the money.”
He put the man on his own feet by representing him to himself as one gainfully employed. That’s what I’m talking about when I tell you: they’re all states. He took him out of one state and put him in another state. The man who is in the new state is the same man. You are an immortal being. You are changing only when you fall into a state. And others who knew you well in one state think, what has happened to him? You either go up, or you go down if they see a radical change, and they wonder, what has happened to him? He is affluent, he is this, he is that, or what has happened to him? He used to be and look at him now. And not a thing changed with the immortal being who occupies the state, other than the state, he changed the state. Man not knowing that he condemns the state when it’s not the being you’re looking at, you’re looking at the state.
So, God forgives everyone—he justifies everyone because he knows they’re only in states. And the Lord created all these states. These are the states. Well, that is what Blake meant, when he said, “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it left paradise following the serpent.”
Following the serpent: when man left that heavenly state of innocence, and came into a world of experience, of educative darkness, and experienced generation. For here we are generating, multiplying in these garments to clothe the innocent one who has come down. So, the whole drama is from innocence through experience to an awakened imagination. When the imagination completely awakes, that’s the divine body, Jesus. That’s God. And it takes all of this journey, we are the pilgrims moving through states.
So, I tell you, master the art of moving from one state to another state. You are not the state, you never have been and you never will be. The state, if you are going to condemn, condemn the state. But why condemn anything? Moving out of a state into another state. Move yourself out of one state into another state. So, others say it can’t be done? Leave them alone. They’ll say it can’t be done. You go about your Father’s business, moving from state to state as you desire it.
Now, it all starts with a hunger. It starts with a real desire on your part. And all these infinite states are simply to satisfy the hunger of men. So, you want to be good, as you understand good to be? You want to be wealthy, as you understand it? You want to be famous, as you understand it? All these are states. Go into the state before you are qualified. Go into the state and stay there. The state has all the things necessary to externalize itself. But you are the occupant of power. You have to go into the state and dwell there.
Now, as I go into it, let me remain in it. If I come back, like the positron, I’m simply going to be turned right around, I’m not going to be deflected, and continue my journey in the same direction, only deflected; I’m going to be so shocked—and everyone is shocked. When I go into a state and it seems like this, seems so real. When I open my eyes: well, here I am, back here. But that shock turns me around from my return to that motion forward now as an electron. I’m not a positron anymore. I was a positron when I actually started back in time, and when I reach this body, and the body is jolted when I open my eyes, then what I did there, I’m moving across a bridge of incident now, some series of events that leads me up to the fulfillment in what the world calls reality. But it was real when I occupied it in my imagination. That’s when it was real. We exist in these bodies. We live in our imaginations. For our imaginations, these are the only realities. Imagination is God. That is the divine body, Jesus.
I used to sit and simply try it in my living room. I couldn’t see the chair where I sat in the living room from the telephone in the hallway. I would sit at the telephone in my imagination, while my body was in the living room. And then I would assume I am on the telephone. Physically, I couldn’t see that body. And then suddenly, I would feel myself back on the chair. And what a shock. And then from the chair, I would put myself back at the telephone. I would stand on the outside of the house and see it like this building, see it from the street, rather than from here, and assume while I’m standing here that I am looking at the building from the outside, and suddenly you are on the outside, and you’re looking at it from the outside. Do it in your own home. Do it with anything in your room. And that gets you sort of in a state of moving. You become mobile, as it were. And it’s easy, then, to occupy any state. And they’re only states! So, when someone thinks themselves so important, it’s only a state, but that’s all right. That state, in itself, is important to them, and anyone occupying that state must do exactly what they would do. If I were in the state of Hitler, I would do the same thing Hitler did, because it’s a state, and if I fall into it, knowingly or unknowingly, I’ve got to play that part.
So, he does not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state but to be in every one of them states of the sleep which the soul falls into when it leaves paradise following the serpent; that serpent of generation. So here you can be what you want to be if you know that all these are only states. And in the end, you are justified. You’re completely exonerated. You are acquitted, divinely acquitted.
So, let no one frighten you as to what you must do to earn the Kingdom. You do not earn the Kingdom. It’s your Father’s good pleasure to give it to you. And it’s a gift that is not your due. It’s not a reward for any good things you did. If you’re in a state and you think that the good things you are doing—it’s only the state. You moved into it, and I personally find it easier living in my world to be in a good state. I find it easier to be kind than to be unkind. If I’m ever unkind, it hurts me more than anyone who receives my dart, as it were. An unkind remark hurts me more than the one who received it from me.
So, I find it easier to be in that sort of a state. But eventually, you will completely awake with the gift, and the gift is God himself, There’s nothing but God in this world; but nothing but God. Someone called me up and asked me about devils: that she went down to this Christian Science practitioner, who now feels she is hounded with devils. Well, they teach about devils, how the devil does this, the devil does that, but that’s getting away from the first and great commandment, which is the great commandment: the Sh’ma, the confession of faith in the Hebraic world: Hear O God, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
The minute you get away from that, you have a devil: there’s another God, another creator, another something, and if you have two, you’re going to have four, you’re going to have eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Always come back to that fundamental state: there is only God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say I am, that’s God. There is no other, and never will be another God. He is going to unfold himself within you, and completely awaken, and when he awakens, you are God. And then you’ll be clothed in that heavenly garment, and I’m telling you, it’s a heavenly garment. I can’t describe it other than to tell you when you’re in it, you’re not standing on the earth. You’re lifted off, as it were, and I can only describe it as air and fire. And when you glide by, and the sea of humanity, imperfect, you do not raise one little finger to change them. No compassion. Because they cannot remain that way when you go by. And as you glide by, everyone is made perfect, everyone. Not one is left out. Doesn’t matter what he did to lose his eyes, what he did to lose his arm, to lose his legs, to lose his tongue. It doesn’t matter what he did. In your presence, he cannot remain imperfect. And everyone is made perfect. That is the Kingdom.
So, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. So set your hope fully upon this gift. And then you can endure the temporary ills of the world. Because we are moving through these things, and not every moment of time are we alert to these states, and we can fall into it by reading the newspaper; fall into it by hearing a news bulletin; fall into it by a little conversation with a friend, and there we slip innocently into a state.
But the state isn’t concerned: you animated it, you made it alive when you entered it. Because you are the only resurrecting power in the world. You are the resurrecting, living power of the world. And that power is your own wonderful human imagination.
So, everyone here: put your mind at peace and don’t think for one moment by being good, as the world calls good, by attending certain services, doing certain things, and observing certain things that there’s something on the outside watching you and marking up some little thing in your favor. No, you’re simply waiting for that appointed moment when he unveils himself.
So, you set your hope fully on the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ within you, which is the Lord and his son. That is Jesus Christ: the Lord and his Christ. And Christ is the son of God. And no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the remembrance. Well, he doesn’t really bring about that remembrance until the Son appears, and when the Son appears, memory returns and you know who the Lord is because you know who his son is. And you wear this little garment until, for a few more years. You take it off, and you are not in this world at all. You are in an entirely different world, where everything is perfect because you are perfect. And when you want to make yourself seen by another, you make that choice. They do not come in search of you and see you.
I’ll give you one little story; and she doesn’t come here anymore. And she may not be in the city, but she told me one night, quite innocently, she said, you know, I found myself asleep, I was very, very conscious, and I said to these people around me, do you know of Neville? And they said, yes. And she said, who is he? And with that, she said, I was whirled as though I was some meteor flying through space, thrown out, as it were, and woke scared to death.
You do not see one who has been born from above until he chooses to show himself. He must manifest himself to you, you do not go looking for him. Because unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom, even though it is his good pleasure to give you the Kingdom, it will come after your birth from above. Prior to that birth, he cannot give you the Kingdom. And one to whom he’s already given the Kingdom is not in the world, though for a little while he is in the world telling the story, telling it from experience, and not from theory.
So, I’m telling you exactly what has happened to me. I share it with you. And it’s going to happen to you, every one of you. So let no one, in any way, try to convince you that you must be a little better than what you are if you would get the Kingdom. The Kingdom is your gift. And listen to the words, from the 11th chapter of Romans: it is irrevocable. The gift and the call of God are irrevocable. You cannot revoke it and no one can revoke it. And your inheritance is not only God; we’re told in the 4th chapter of Romans, you inherit the world. The world is yours, and all within it. You don’t inherit some little portion of the world. You inherit God, and God owns the world, and the world is your inheritance. So, in the 16th Psalm, David is made to say, the portion of my inheritance is the Lord. That’s his portion. He inherits the Lord. The Son inherits the Father. And so, a man matures when he becomes his own Father.
This is the great mystery of Scripture. And you will inherit the Father, for it is his will, and no one can break his will. It’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you. So, when you hear people bragging about how this one is better than the other one, forget it. They’re judging states. So that man is richer because he’s in a state that is richer than the other one that is poor, but the occupant of the rich state does not differ from the occupant of the poor state. And the occupant of the state tonight that is in jail does not differ from the judge who sentenced him. One is not better than the other in the eyes of God. In the eyes of God, all are acquitted. That’s justification. We are justified by his grace, we are told. All are justified by his grace. And grace is an unearned, unmerited gift of God, and that grace is God’s last, his final gift, which is love in action, and God is love. It’s the gift of himself. And that’s when he gives you himself; there’s not a thing else to give. He gave you himself, and the whole vast world is yours. So, we inherit the earth.
Now tonight, I hope you’ll start practicing. Won’t take you any time at all to try it. It costs you nothing. And it works wonders. You can sit here tonight, or you go home, put yourself in the state of affluence— what’s wrong with that? Well, back in the 1920s, 1930s, we had a deep financial Depression starting in 1929, and do you know that you could go to Tiffany, and buy, say, eight glasses, beautiful glasses for a wedding present, cost you, what? Not more than seventy-five cents. A beautiful glass in a Tiffany box, the whole thing was in a Tiffany box, beautifully done. You’d go into Macy’s, or Gimbels, and you’d buy something not comparable for a dollar, dollar-twenty-five. But the majority would not be seen dead in Tiffany. That was style. That was something beyond them. They wouldn’t even walk in, they felt embarrassed to walk in. Yet you could go into Tiffany, the jewels are on the first floor; take the elevator to the third, where they had the lovely china and lovely glassware on another floor—and get a beautiful, gift-wrapped package from Tiffany—you didn’t have to send two dozen, eight; that’s enough. Eight beautiful glasses. And people would not go in. They were embarrassed to be seen in Tiffany. I’m quite sure the same thing is true with their branch here. And you could go to Tiffany and buy a lovely thing for very little, really. But people are trained: that means something that’s classy and that, that and the other, and if you’re in one state, you can’t argue them out of it! You’ve got to get out of that state to be able to go into a state.
And if you tell them, you know, at one time in your life, a $12 suit, that’s all you could afford, and all you thought you could ever afford. To get out of that state and pick something differently, and then you pay $250 for a suit easier than you could get $12 for the other suit! I know it happened in my own case. When I began to buy a suit for $250, it was easier for me to pay $250 than when I had to get out $12 for a suit that, if it rained, I had to start running, or I couldn’t get out of it.
Now that is life, and you simply move from one state into another state. And the same being, I am not another being. I answer to the same name. You say, Neville, I answer; I answered then to the name, Neville. And yet I moved from one state to another state to another state. As you move from one state, what you couldn’t do in one state, you find it so easy to do in the other state. I was in a state, for the longest while, where I couldn’t eat meat, fish, fowl, drink alcohol, smoke, sex, well, I did nothing, but nothing. Then overnight, my friend Abdullah told me, “You’re going to come back from Barbados and you will have died, you know.” I said, “I will die?” He said, “I don’t mean that you’re going to die and be buried in Barbados or be buried at sea, but you will have died. All the things you haven’t done in seven years, you’ll be doing before you get back.”
You know, he was true. And I couldn’t tell you how it happened. I couldn’t tell you how it happened. It just happened. In Barbados, I lived for three months in my mother’s home and still lived as I did in New York City. And on my trip north, in ten days, I was doing everything I hadn’t done in seven years. And I cannot tell you how it happened. I moved out from one state into another state, and it came to me as normal and as natural to do the things I did at sea as I did, in seven years, the things I didn’t do.
So, I tell you: they’re only states. All states of consciousness. And if you recognize that, you can forgive every being in this world, no matter what he is, or what he plans to be, or what he has done. Because in the end, he is going to be justified. He is justified by the grace of God, as we are told. Everyone is justified by the grace of God. He is divinely acquitted. And when God acquits him, who is going to judge him? And after justification comes glorification.
So, he begins with those whom he foreknew. Well, he foreknew us. For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. And if he chose me in him before the foundation of the world, then he knew me. And those whom he foreknew, well, then, he also predestined. He predestined them to be conformed to the image of his Son: that which reflects his glory, and radiates his glory, and bears the express image of himself. I am destined to be that: to be the express image of himself. And those whom he then predestined, he called. Call my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Call them all, and he’s calling us one by one by one, for we are so altogether unique. He can’t call us in pairs. Call us one by one. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
So, you are destined to be glorified with God, as God. And it will not, in any way, be stopped by anyone.
So, let no one frighten you. From the pulpits of the world, every Sunday morning, they try to scare the people to death. Set themselves up as the criterion of what people ought to be. In other words, look at me, they will say, and follow me.
I saw, in yesterday’s paper, this son of a very prominent evangelist across the country, he’s in Barbados, he’s in all the West Indies, he’s all over Europe, someone in Denmark wrote me three letters recently asking what I think of him. Well, I did not respond. I answered his first two letters, and then when he kept on trying to make this a conversation between us, and he mentioned this party, I did not answer. I never listened to the man; I’ve never read any of his works; but when I read in the paper yesterday, a picture of his son, who confessed that he was simply, he had sinned against his wife and his children, well, you know what he means. And then he sinned against God.
Then I went on to read that this man takes in, in tithes, thirty million dollars a year, in tithes. He tells them how they’re serving God when they send him money and take in thirty million dollars tax-free. It’s religion, thirty million. So now the son has now been removed from being the heir; the father is eighty years old, but he’s still in control of that thirty million a year, tax-free. I wonder what he talks about.
So, that is big business. When you go into that sort of money, that’s big business, and you have no room in your mind’s eye for any spirituality—none whatsoever!
And you can take that greatest of all books, and make a mess of it, interpreting it as something that is taking place here within the secular world. It isn’t secular at all! This story is profound, well, it’s all spirituality. It’s God’s plan of redemption. It hasn’t a thing to do with the secular world. And they’re telling you the future of America, the future of Russia, the future of China, it’s not in Scripture.
Goddard opens by distinguishing the Law from the Promise, emphasizing that the Kingdom of God is a gift of grace rather than a reward for deeds. This theological foundation reframes justification as an irrevocable divine acquittal and glorification as the final gift of God Himself, whereby believers become "fathers" of their own spiritual transformation.
He develops the central concept of reality as a series of mental states, each alive and tangible to the imagination. By entering and dwelling in a desired state—whether abundance, health, or harmony—one activates its inherent conditions until external circumstances conform to the internal assumption. This teaching underscores the creative potential of consciousness to shape all aspects of life.
Drawing on the 1949 scientific exchange with a physicist and Richard Feynman’s positron theory, Goddard bridges mysticism and physics. The positron’s backward motion in time mirrors the power of imagining desired outcomes as already real, demonstrating that time is a landscape navigable by conscious assumption.
Practical applications abound in his anecdotes: a dropped penny state, aiding a jobless man through inner representation, and personal shifts from austerity to freedom. These examples convey how one’s identity remains constant while the state changes, validating the principle that no state can persist in the presence of a fully imagined assumption.
In closing, Goddard reinforces that imagination is the divine operative in redemption. By mastering state-shifting, believers not only experience temporary relief but embark on a pilgrimage from innocence through experience to awakened consciousness—ultimately unveiling the full revelation of Jesus Christ within.
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