In this lecture Neville Goddard explores the concept of real belief as an imaginative act equivalent to knowing. He emphasizes that faith must be mixed with experience, and that by assuming a fulfilled desire internally—through hearing and seeing imagined scenes—we can externalize our goals. Neville uses biblical symbolism and personal anecdotes, such as Eddie’s encounter with ‘I Am’ and a woman’s seven-year wait for an Egyptian trip, to illustrate the power of imagination. He explains how mental conversations carried out from the premise of fulfillment shape our reality and can even influence other people. Practical examples, like persuading a producer to use stronger praise or causing a cat to stop tearing up rugs, demonstrate the method’s simplicity and effectiveness. Neville concludes by urging listeners to test these techniques in small matters and trust the unseen reality that will manifest in its own appointed time.
Tonight, the subject is our real belief. And I really want this series to be the most productive that we’ve ever had. And by that, I mean I want everyone present to really have a goal, a noble goal, and realize it, realize it before we close in May.
May I tell you, you can realize it. I mean that seriously. So, what do I mean by our real beliefs? Our real beliefs are what we live by. Real belief and knowing are one. What a man really believes is just as though he knows it. It’s tantamount to knowing. So, when I tell you believe, I call it faith, I call it belief, it is not complete until it becomes experience. One must experience it and then they know it. Now you will hear the same thing tonight. Everyone present will hear exactly the same thing, but no two will hear it in the same depth. Some will hear it on the surface, others will hear it below the surface, and others will hear it down in the very depths of their being. It’s where you hear it.
As we are told, “The Word came to them as it did to us, but it did not profit them because it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it.” They heard it and rejected it, but they heard it. It came in and went out. It did not receive acceptance by those who heard it and so they instantly rejected it. Tonight, I hope you will not reject what I’m here to tell you, but that’s your choice, you’re free. You will accept it or reject it. But I tell you if I get through tonight and you apply it because you are the operant power. I can tell you that it doesn’t operate itself.
If this very moment I ask you to think of a friend, just think of a friend. And now hear him tell you something lovely, something lovely about himself, about a mutual friend or about you, just hear it. Do you believe that that actually took place? You may say, “Well, I imagined it, but it didn’t really take place.” I will tell you the day will come, and I hope now, that when you imagine a state before you have external confirmation of that state, to you it is as though you heard it externally. You know it. That this internal act is equal to the external confirmation of that act. You get to that point because the difference between God and man is measured only in terms of this imaginative power.
If I were to speak of the power that is God, as we are told in Scripture, is revealed constantly as power, sheer, third chapter, fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of the book of Exodus, sheer power. Moses stands in the presence of power, but it’s creative power. And the distance between God and man are measured by simply power. On this level, if I’m in the service of my being, only this is real and what my senses allow. But if I go deeper into my own being, moving ever towards the core of my being who is God, then my imaginative act becomes externalized. Quickly externalized as I go deeper and deeper. On the surface, it seems to take an interval of time, if I believe. If I don’t believe it, it never comes into some external form at all, never. Yet I’m living in a world, not understanding it, not knowing what it’s all about.
So, really the story that I want to tell you is trying to ask you, and plead with you to buy your religion wholesale, go to the maker, go to the source. Don’t buy it in retail from some man in between. No one in between you and the source. You go right into the depth and buy your religion wholesale. By going to the source, which is your own wonderful human imagination, your own Iamness, that’s God.
The story we told you last Tuesday of one whose name was Eddie. Eddie had the identical experience to the one recorded in the book of Exodus. When he heard, “do not come up here”; read the words, the words are, “do not come here.” Read it in the book of Exodus, the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of the third chapter of Exodus. And the Lord said unto Moses, “Do not come here.” And then Moses hid his face, not in shame, but in fear; he was afraid to look at God. So, Eddie saw the symbol of God and he ran, he was scared too. The identical story. What did he hear? The revelation of God’s name, I am. He first heard it, I am, no one in sight. Then it repeated itself so loudly, he thought it came from above. He looked up thinking it was some machine, maybe some helicopter with a PA system is broadcasting the name, I am. There was not a thing in sight. And then the third, don’t come up here. Being curious, he did go up there to the hill to confront a rattlesnake. Fortunately, it was not coiled to spring. It was simply a four-foot-long snake, all stretched out: the symbol of the creative power of God. But it scared him, it scares man. That man actually sees what really is in himself, that he’s solely responsible for everything that’s taking place in his will, solely responsible.
It scares him. It’s too much. Until he goes deeper and deeper and hears the same word of truth but hears it in depth and then he assumes full responsibility for all that is taking place within him.So tonight, let me share with you a few stories. Seven years ago, a lady, she’s not here tonight, she’s now on a new job and is taken away for a while. But when she heard it, that imagining creates reality, she said to herself, “Well, if that is so, I would like to go to Egypt.” She had no money. She’s never been a lady of means, always working, small sums of money, could never accumulate what it would take to make the trip. And so, the usual story, she told her dream, she didn’t keep it to herself, she told it, nothing wrong in it. If you really believe it, you can tell it. As you’re told in the Scripture, “Go, tell no man, but show John, show the world.”
Well, that’s if you don’t tell man before—will man believe you after the event? He may question your honesty. But if you tell him before the event, then he is assured because actually, you have a witness to the fact, that you did tell him before the event. So that is also in Scripture. And now I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe; but that is courage in the depth of the soul, where one knows the imaginal act is in effect at the very moment of the act, though not yet seen by the outer man. But not everyone has that courage and that faith in the imaginal act. So, she told it and naturally her friends criticized her. It is stupid to go to that man, you waste your money. It’s not religion. What is it? He’s telling you that an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact—but that’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense.
To them, a true judgment must conform to the external fact to which it relates. So, if I say, well, isn’t this a lovely dog, and there is no dog to bear witness to my judgment, my judgment is false. So that’s what they gathered from what she told them that I am teaching. And so, the whole thing is insane; it’s stupid. Well, the years went on, it’s been seven years now, and this is what happened this past week. She got a job, she’s a nurse. And so, the job moves around. She goes from home to home where the need is there. And so, she found herself in the environment or the neighborhood of a friend she had not seen or contacted in a year. She had exchanged a birthday card and a Christmas greeting with a little note on the card, but no telephone call and no other contact.
Finding herself in the neighborhood, she calls her. When this friend heard her voice on the wire, she said, “Oh Jen, you can have it, you can have it.” She said, “All right, all right, I’ll take it. What is it?” And then this is the story. There was a party, a pre-Lenten party at the hotel, Hilton, some Mardi Gras by a Catholic society, the Joseph and Mary society. There were door prizes. The major prize was a thirty-day trip, first-class, all expenses paid, and stopping along the way at the Hilton hotels in the Near East. And Egypt is part of the setup. The lady and her family had spent several months last year abroad and had no desire this year to go abroad again. In fact, they’ve already arranged to go to New York City for the World’s Fair, which opens in April. So, a trip abroad is out. Furthermore, this ticket, this door ticket only accepts one person, not a group, not a family.
So that was what her friend said to her, she would give her. Jen said, “All right, I’ll take it.” And then called me up to tell me the story. Delayed seemingly seven years, she still now has her ticket, if she wants it, to the Near East where Egypt is included. And she goes, first-class, all expenses paid, everything paid—because she believed. Maybe in the interval, her faith wavered, maybe she justified it by saying, “Maybe I don’t want it.” Or in some strange way, try to explain it away. But it still, in its own good time, came to the surface. I’ll ask you not to throw your dreams away and feel that they are impossible, a realization in this strange drab world of external facts. Every dream can come true if I can get through to you that your imagination is God, and that your imaginable act when you think of a friend carrying on the conversation, that is Jesus Christ in action.
Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourself. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? If he is in you, then who is he? He is your own imagining. God is your imagination. God in action is imagining. And God in action is Christ. Christ as defined in Scripture is the power and the wisdom of God. So, I tell you, everyone can realize if you really believe in Jesus Christ. One billion will say they believe in Jesus Christ and cross themselves before a piece of wood or a piece of marble or clay or something other than a living God. And they’ve been kneeling before these external icons.
Here is the king of Greece, who just died. And they brought what they considered a holy icon for the man who has died. In the eyes of God, a king is just like a servant. They do not differ. One’s love for one is not greater than his love for another. To what extent have they heard the word of God and believed; so, he’s dying, they’ll bring a holy icon. It didn’t work, just saw the little icon, and so he makes his exit like any other person in the world.I hope that everyone here will find the real Jesus Christ. The real Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagining. That’s God in action. The real God is your own wonderful, lovely imagination. When you say I am, that’s God.
Now let me share with you that which was given to me this past week by a gentleman who is here tonight. He’s written the most glorious stories. I hope he keeps it up because they’re exciting. I share them with those who came home since I received his letters and I will share them with you tonight. He’s a writer. He writes for TV. He started three years ago on this show that has been running for three years and he writes every third of four scripts. He said when I started my price was $2,500 a script. And in two years, my agent got it up to $3,000 a script. Then a year ago, last Christmas, my mother came west, came from the east to visit us, and I told her what I receive for a script, $3,000 a script. And she said, well, I always assumed that you got $3,500 a script. She wasn’t all impressed with $3,000. And then he tried to explain to her that as far as he knew, there was no writer in the field, solo writer, who got more than he did. He was getting $3,000 a script. She was not impressed. Didn’t disturb her at all. She still said that as far as she was concerned, it was worth $3,500 a script. Well, two months later, the agent was called by the studio for a contract, a renewal of the contract for the next year of writing.
Before that thing, he would go over to the studio, he would have to discuss it with the writer. And so, he explained to the writer, he didn’t think that they should ask for more. They moved it from $2,500 a script to $3,000 a script, and you shouldn’t price yourself out of the business by asking for more. And so, the writer agreed. It was a nice, friendly relationship between himself and the producer. So why ask for more and get out of the business? So, it was agreed. The very next day after this agreement, a conference was held to discuss stories, a story conference. And so, the producer said to the writer, “Have you come to an agreement with the contract for the next year?” And he said, “Yes, I’m going to sign.” He said, “Have you asked for more money?” He said, “No.” “Did you ask for more?” He said, “But you are always complaining about the budget, it isn’t big enough, and now you are telling me to ask for more.” He said, “You ask for more money.” Again, he said, “I don’t want to price myself out of the business.” He said, “You tell your agent to ask for more.”
So, when he went back, he called his agent. And when he told the agent to ask for more money, the agent thought he had too many cocktails for lunch. So, he said, “No, I will give you the source.” And he told him what had been told to him that very day at the conference. So, the agent now armed with this information that the very producer had recommended an increase. So, he called up the business office of the studio and asked for more. And they simply blew their top, they screamed. And then very generously, they said, forget it as though you didn’t even ask for it, so that the nice relationship between the producer and the writer can go on as it has for the past three years.
But the agent knowing the source was adamant. And so, when he came out of that office, he came out with a contract for $3,500 a script. So said the writer in his letter to me, “My mother merely assumed that I was getting $3,500 a script. And so, her assumption went behind the backs of all of us, producers, everyone, and bore fruit.” So, then he said, “I called her up and I told her what I was getting a script now. And then she started to seriously study your books.” And he said, “A problem, a very great burden had been with her for twenty-five years, a most distressing problem, which I will tell you about at some future date. But may I tell you, last Friday, it was completely swept out of her life. And now a confession is in order. When I first heard you, I couldn’t understand you. And then I began to be afraid that I was going mad because I could understand you.” Then he said, “I will explain that later.”
So, I am waiting equally for that explanation. But we are told in the book of John, “He has a devil. He is mad. Why listen to him?” You have your Bibles. That’s the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of the book of John. That is the chapter where he said, “I and my father are one.” He had just gotten through in the previous or the eighth chapter by saying, “I know my father, my father is he whom you called God, but I know my father and you know not your God.” And for this, they stoned him, stoned him with the little facts of life. That’s the stone of Scripture. When you throw the facts at a man, when the man dares to assume what reason denies, what his senses deny, then you who will not go along with his depth, you’ll throw the stones or the facts of life at it to deny the reality of what he’s claiming by a more imaginal act.
And so, he had just gotten through making these bold assertions—“That I and my father are one. And my father is he whom you call God, but I know my father and he knows not your God.” And so, this story, he said, “I didn’t understand you. And then I began to fear a form of madness because I could understand you”—for this is, it takes you into an entirely different world for reason on this surface, over the mind, doesn’t really prevail, that you really believe in the reality of what inwardly you are doing. And then it comes to the surface if you don’t tell it before, and you tell it afterwards, they will question your honesty. If you take them into your confidence and tell it before, if you have enough faith, go about your business, if you don’t, they will plague you and throw the stones at you.
And every time they meet you, they’ll say, “Well, where is it? You said you’re going to have a certain home, a certain job, a certain sum of money. Where is it?” And so, they are always throwing the stones at you or the facts of life. Now, here is something and you listen to it carefully. It’s a long letter, and he’s bringing out certain points that might have escaped you, for here what we are trying to do is to find out all the little facets of the greatest secret in the world: the secret of imagining.For as Fawcett said, the secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which all should aspire for supreme power, supreme wisdom, and supreme delight lie in the solution of this far-off problem.* This great mystery. And he has found some light on it. So, if I can recall, it’s a long letter, typewritten four pages, but I will give you some of the highlights of it:
So, when I met my producer three years ago, he was a very subdued and reserved sort of a gentleman. Reserved, he says, would be the right word to use to describe him, very reserved. So, unlike the volatile enthusiasm of whom I formerly worked, he was very reserved. In fact, he couldn’t express the superlative in any way. In fact, his greatest praise was the word, good. So, you brought in the script and he would accept the script and his highest praise was good. Well, I thought I’m going to change this. So, I lay on the bed and I heard him say to me, great, just great. Now I hadn’t started on the script. I had just given him a script and he pronounced the script, good. I am now doing this about the next script. And I heard him distinctly. I went over and over in my study or set up as it were. So, I heard him inwardly pronounce the new script as great, just great. And while I am lying there, the phone rings, I haven’t started the script. The phone is ringing and it’s the producer. And he is telling me that the script that he had formerly pronounced good was great, just great. Well, he said, he threw me a curve because that’s not what I was expecting, it was about the new script, which I hadn’t even started. So, he not only threw me this curve, but someone had their lines crossed. So, right there, I kept on now working on the new, I would say, line for him to use, and I change it from great, just great to terrific. And so here I am. I only heard one word, it is terrific. Well, I submitted a script and that’s exactly the word he used when he said to me, it’s terrific. And with the same enthusiasm that matched my imagining. Now I said to myself, two months later, every script I presented within two months, it was either great, just great, or terrific. It didn’t go back to good anymore. So, I said, now, I’m going to experiment again. So, this time I’m going to make him say absolutely sensational.
So, I heard him say absolutely sensational. Then he says to me, what the hell if you’re praising yourself why not get the best? So, I am doing it to myself anyway. So, why be modest about it? I am doing the whole thing because he’s only echoing it. So, I said, absolutely sensational. So, I finished the script, took the script into him and he pronounced it good. He said, I almost fell out of the chair. It was not the role that I had written for him. And he said, do you know how authors hate adlibbing? You know what that means in the theatrical world when the author writes a play and some actor thinks he knows more than the author and he changes the script and he adlibs, or maybe he forgets his lines. And if he’s smart enough, he can throw a few words in, and he adlibs. But no matter how smart he thinks he is, he doesn’t flatter the author. The author feels, he knows better than any actor, what should be there at that moment. And so, he said in his letter, you know how authors hate adlibbing. So, what could I do? The script had to be cut. So, he gave me back the script to cut a certain portion of it. I took the script home, did all the cutting, and then mailed it to him. And I mailed it as a petulant child. I didn’t even revise what he had said. But the very next day he calls and he said to me on the wire, it’s absolutely sensational.
Now this is the point I want you to pay strict attention to. He said, you know, my experience with the producer disturbed me, greatly disturbed me; to hear or to occasionally think about this, isn’t so bad. By that, he meant you hear 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. Well, to hear that and to occasionally think about it, isn’t too bad, but when it seeps in, and takes hold of you, and goes deeper, you realize that it’s true, that that producer who is so important in the production of this great series, who is spending its fortunes, he has it to spend, that is, he allows it. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been successful for thirty-three years. And yet he had to actually utter the word that this writer is writing for him.
And when he met him, he was so reserved, he never used any superlatives, and could never bring himself to praise a thing beyond the word, good. And he raised him from good to great, just great, terrific, absolutely sensational. That’s an enormous accomplishment in anyone’s vocabulary when he began as a most reserved party. So, when the individual writer now sees what he did with a man, he said, you know, it distressed me. It distressed me for the simple reason, I had to remake my world only as I remake myself. Only as I could remake myself, could I in any way remake the world, and what an undertaking. But if I found a solution. I will not now think of myself X number of years into the future. I am painting a portrait of myself and portraits are not painted by one stroke with a brush. And so, I am taking it easily. I start with the little things in my life, the little things, and I change them to make them conform to the portrait of the being I am painting of myself.
I started with a simple thing. We have a cat, or we had a cat, and it simply clawed up the entire rug. All the rugs were simply pieces of felt, all torn up. And so, we delayed buying a new rug. Really, said he, we were hoping that she would die. After all, she was fifteen years old and she seemed determined to outlive Methuselah. But because she still was very healthy and she didn’t die, we bought the new rug and right away, she started all over again to tear up the rug. And for two days, I said something must be done in my imagination. I had proved it with the producer. So, I went to work in my imagination and saw this cat in the backyard tearing up a mat that we had in the backyard for just such a purpose.
On the third day, she was out in that backyard, clawing the mat until the day she died, she never once tore up our rug. Here is the destructive power in the world, saved in the imagination of man. If someone heard that story and didn’t believe it, they could this night have a cat in their house and they will say, oh, that was just coincidence, in his case, it wouldn’t work here, so I’m not even going to try it, that borders on madness, and no one wants to be mad. In fact, to say that you were once put away is like leprosy. They don’t want that. That you were once committed to some asylum, to go to a hospital because you had a pain and you needed an operation, that’s allowed today because everyone has them. But not everyone is put away for some mental, I would say, side issue.
And so, in his case, he did it. The average person would’ve heard it and who would believe that in their own home, they too, could make the dog or the cat or the bird or anything else conform to an imaginable act. Well, having done this, now he sees the power within him. He’s not going to go all out, he knows he’s done it. He has tangible proof that he’s done it. And from now on, he said, he’s going to actually be faithful to what he has found within himself. He’s found, Christ. The day is coming, he will actually stand in the presence of infinite love. But before he stands in the presence of infinite love, he presents himself first as infinite might. And throughout the Bible, you can’t find any basis to deny it, it is might, it’s power and authority. From beginning to end, when he presents himself, it’s sheer might, sheer power, until one day, man will see that this power on this level and in many levels below resolves itself into infinite love, and it’s man. And it’s the being that you’re moving toward, and it’s God the Father. So here, in his own case, it scared him or rather it depressed him to think that such power was in man, and yet it’s no other place. It’s only in man because the power of which we speak, the greatest power in the world, really the only power, is your own wonderful human imagination.
Now, the lady whose story I told first, Jen. Jen said that this present job of hers, this little boy came home from school, and the high winds we’ve been having took the aerial down and flattened it. It’s still on the ground, she said. And so, she tried the TV and there was no TV. She tried it and tried it and there was no TV. The little boy came home and she said, oh Lord, he’s going to be so disappointed because he’s back from school, and he wants to see the TV. So, he goes straight to the TV. He turns it on. He saw the aerial flattened. Then he put his two hands on the top of the machine and just put them there. And she said to him, you know, there’s going to be no picture; he said, oh yes, there will be. That does it. And she said, what does it? He said my imagination. I just imagined it, it’ll do it. He came back, got in front of the picture with Jen, and here comes this beautiful picture.
Now, Jen couldn’t do it. And yet she knows this principle, but she’s an adult now. We become adulterated as we grow in this world. The little child could actually believe that that power in his hand was all his imagination. It’ll do it. And Jen told me over the telephone because she’s working, she can’t come here now, that the little boy only put his hands on it and swore that there would come a picture, and the picture came to Jen’s amazement, but not to the boy’s. He sat and looked at it and Jen sat there bewildered. The one who has the thing now to go to Egypt.
Now to come back to the gentleman’s story, He said, I saw an ad of a Swiss record changer, and so I went over to my electronics dealer and I told him that I would like one. He said they aren’t in the country and they will be possibly a few weeks before they get here. But we have eleven orders so far, would you like to order one? He said, yes, I’d like to order one. So, he ordered one. So, he said at the end of the month, he received a bill for $375 for the changer, while he hadn’t received the instrument, so he called up the office and they apologized. They said that the girl mistook the order for a sale. And so, we have bad news for you, said the girl, it will not be here for three or four months, but they corrected their mistake, it was not a bill. It was simply an order that they had misinterpreted. He then said to himself, I will now look around the house and spent three days instead of writing to see where he is going to put the outlet for this machine.
And when he decided where he’d put it, he called the electricians and had them bore a hole through the wall to put in the cable for this changer. Now he said, I will need a stand for it. So, he went out, looking for a stand, went to all the places, and one salesman said, what kind of a machine have you? Because you don’t like these stands. So, he told the nature of the machine. And the man said, if you have one, it’s a miracle because there aren’t any in the country. And there won’t be here for three or four months, which was only confirmed in what the agency said. He said, oh, I can’t find the stand, I will design one. So, he designed the stand and had it made. When the stand came, and he placed it where he intended to place the machine, he said to himself, I will now see the machine in there, which he did. Now, he said, now that I have the machine it is the only fair to pay the bill. So, he sat down and wrote the check out and sent the check off to the electronic firm for $375 in full for his machine.
Two days after this, they called him to say, we have your record changer. He wondered why there were twelve of them on the list. The man only received four in his shipment of an order of twelve. And this friend who wrote me the letter said, well, it could be that I sent my check in advance because I paid for what to me was before me in my imagination. It could be that, on the other hand I’m not asking questions, why he gave me the first one in and why he jumped me from twelve to number one. However, I have the machine, and now my next problem is this: It’s a very delicate, complicated, sly, tricky thing. And so, I am now trying to imagine myself smart enough to operate it.
So that is the story of using your imagination. I say faith, as we are told, we understand that by faith, the world was framed by the word of God, but you know who God is now, your own wonderful Iamness, that’s God. He’s framing his world but it takes faith to hear it. Without faith, it won’t work. To hear it mixed with faith, it will work. If you sit down as he did, he said, I lay on the bed, you can sit right here and carry on this inner, mental conversation from premises of fulfilled desire, for thinking follows the tracks laid down in one’s own inner conversations. You control the nature of the conversation and see to it that it’s not an argument, it’s simply from wishes fulfilled, regardless of the nature of that wish, you carry it on the inside. Some are better at the video, they can see better, they can hear, but I find hearing so very, very easy, and I am not a musician. So, you don’t have to be musically inclined to really hear.
I appreciate music, but I don’t play. And I don’t understand music in the true sense of the word, I simply appreciate it. Yet, I can hear it vividly, a man’s voice as he speaks for one second, let me get the tone, then put upon that tone any word I want to hear, and I hear it as though he were here. Now how long it takes for what I have heard him say to come to pass, I don’t know. As we tell you in that story of the book of Habakkuk: “The vision has its own appointed hour.”
“It ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.” So, one seed grows overnight. Another seed takes a month. Another seed takes a year as in birth, a boy, a child comes to this world nine months, but a chicken comes out in twenty-one days. And so, everything has a different interval of time between conception and birth in this world. So, what determines the nature of an interval, I don’t know. But have faith that it is sure and it will not for its own sake be late, not for its own nature will it be late. So, if a child comes out in nine months, it isn’t late for a child. If a chicken comes out in twenty-one days, it’s not late or early for a chicken. That’s the interval of time between that moment when it was fertilized and properly nested and then the moment of breaking the shell and hatching.
So here in our case apply it. And you will, in the next few months, I’m only here for three months, not yet three months. And you’ll be able to tell me the most fantastic stories in the world because you couldn’t start from anything more behind the eight ball. You meet a conservative gentleman who would never beyond, well, the wildest dream, go outside and exclaim something is really, absolutely sensational. It’s all against his nature. A thing is good, that’s good enough. You’re being well paid for it. You’ve got $2,500 and you’ve got $3,000 for a script. And every three weeks you’re bringing one in because it’s a half-hour’s show. It runs weekly. So, every three weeks, you’re getting a check for $3,000. Now you’re getting $3,500. And yet the man I’m quite sure like all writers, he is not contracted to write only and only for that, if he has time outside of writing these scripts, there are other outlets for his talents as a writer. He’s not confined to that. And therefore, the man who is not given to exploding, he made him explode and raised him gradually to great, just great, terrific, and then the final explosion. And he said in this letter is the warmest and the friend is the relationship between us.
So, I ask you to do the same thing. I don’t care what it is in this world, know what you want, conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of that dream, and then inwardly carry on these mental conversations from the premise of the fulfilled desire. If you can see at the same time that you hear like a TV set, all right, put them together, it’s better. But if you can really visualize, and not many can visualize, you will find the audio very, very simple. But when you begin to visualize, may I tell you, it’s the most thrilling thing in the world, to be able to actually see just like this, to be in a dream awake. It’s like being in a dream, only awake. And so, then you take it and return to this level where it hasn’t taken place, you have no fears, you have no doubts. The whole world could collapse. You know you saw it. You’re still seeing it in your mind’s eye now. But you actually saw it and you heard it. And so, it must come to pass. You saw it and you heard it. And so, you meet someone who is passing through sheer hell and they ask of you anything, still in your world, sing them out and hear them tell you that they have what they sought, just as though they have it. And then let it go.Don’t raise a finger to make it so. Don’t get in the phone and call a friend to ask the friend to intercede, to help you out. Don’t do a thing. Just simply believe in the reality of your imaginal act.
Because if you go to the end, then you can’t concern yourself with the means to that end. That will deny the end by any means that you would even entertain to aid the growth of it because you went beyond the pregnancy right into birth. And so, you saw it and you heard it. Now leave it alone and let it work. And may I tell you, it will work. And then you will find God, and when you come to the final grand, I would say the last stretch, the final stretch, when you’re going home now, really going home, leaving behind you, this world, this age altogether. They will come one after the other, the most fantastic mystical experiences where everything said of Jesus Christ you will experience and you will know beyond all doubt who Jesus Christ really is. That he truly is supernaturally born. Born out of a skull of a man. How he discovers the fatherhood of God. And how he ascends into Heaven and everything said of him happens to you. And so, you know how true the story is, how altogether fantastically wonderful Scripture is when one experiences it. And so, I ask you to join with me in testing this greatest of all mysteries. Put it to the test. Start with something simple. The average person would have a destructive animal like the cat wouldn’t consider that a simple problem. And yet in 48 hours, it was resolved.
But one point he made when the man told him, he used the words, he expressed himself when he said to me, terrific. He expressed it with the enthusiasm that matched my imagining. The world is the only response, infinite response, it’s an echo. And the whole vast world only echoes. And so, what echoed in this case, when he said, terrific, you can see what the writer’s imaginal act was. He actually caught a mood that was really forceful. So, then the word terrific came through, it wasn’t simply, “Oh, I think it’s terrific.” He exploded with terrific to equal the emotional state of the man who made him say terrific.So, catch it and feel it and use your imagination as a great actor would. He has to put himself into the part and play it. And to the degree that he feels it, he gets beyond the footlights. If he doesn’t identify himself with the character that he’s trying to depict, he never gets over. He has to become the character. And so, this one became the character of hearing the actor whose lines he wrote. And the actor was given a line to say, you said, terrific, and I’ll listen carefully because you’ve got to say it and I am directing it. I don’t want any little terrific. I want you to really give it. And so, I will now give you the mood that I want you to adopt.
And so, he gives them to him and the word comes through exactly to match his imaginal act. And his use of words fascinates me because not everyone understands the baseball language. When he said he threw me a curve, something entirely different. It wasn’t what I expected. That was less the script that you read, he said and pronounced, good. I don’t want that. I want you to pronounce this new statement and say that it is really great. Great. Just great. Of the new script, I haven’t even started the new script. I used my word, but you sort of predated it. You went back in time and called it the other script, and then the man comes back and actually calls it. But after he changed the word from that to terrific. That’s really discovering how you use your imagination. But if you don’t and you think, “well, it’s just on this level,” you will never get off. But I want everyone here to really believe it and try it. If I take from you this night, if you’re here for the first time and I’ve taken off, shaken your belief in a personal God outside of yourself, a personal savior outside of yourself, I don’t apologize because I know it is true what I’ve told you. I am not theorizing. I’m speaking from experience. And so, when I take this platform and tell you that I know the reality that is God.
I wouldn’t care what the whole world would say about it. When they say, “You don’t mean that God truly stood before you or you stood before him and you looked into the face of man.” I say, yes, I did, and it is man. I am is spirit but it needs man its perfect form to really express anything in this world. So, it assumes the form of man. So, when you see I am in form, the form is man. Just like the little girl who told her grandma, “You know what? I went up last night in my dream, right up to the sun. And you know what? He has a face. And you know what? He has hands and he has feet. And you know what? The ocean, the big ocean talked to the sun. And you know what? The sun came down to the earth. And you know what? He has legs and he can walk. And he walked right over to me and kissed me on the cheek, and it was hot. Now, isn’t that a silly, silly dream, Grandma?” But it’s true. There is nothing but God and God is man.
And so, when Blake was asked, when you see the sun, do you see a big round guinea? He said, no. A host of angels claimed holy, holy, holy. He drew him as man. It’s nothing but man because man and God are one. God is man. So, I ask you to take what I’ve given you this night, take it home and you try it. It costs you nothing, only the effort and the little time that you will spend in doing it. But bear in mind, when you do it, believe it. Because the words are, “The word was spoken to them just as it was to us. But it did not profit them because they did not receive it with faith, those who heard it.” And so, when you do it tonight, do it knowing that that in itself is a creative act, that imaginal act, and be faithful to it. Though faith does not give substance to that imaginal act, that unseen reality. Faith is loyalty to unseen reality. You simply are loyal to it. You made a pledge, all right, now you’re loyal to the unseen reality.
Questions, please. Yes, sir?
Questioner: [inaudible]
Neville: No. The three tests are quotes from the book of Deuteronomy. And man in this world, the only devil in this world are the facts of life, the doubts of man. If you could take it, personify doubt, and give doubt a voice to speak, it would throw at you all the facts of life that would be in conflict with your dream, that the dream in itself was the reality before wearing a form. And so, doubt is telling you, “Well, if you think you can do all these things, then cast yourself down. For he has given the angels power to lift you up …” [recording cutoff]
In the opening of the lecture, Neville Goddard redefines belief as an act indistinguishable from knowing. By equating imagination with divine creative power, he dismantles the barrier between faith and experience. This framing shifts responsibility for reality from external forces to the individual’s internal assumptions, underlining the transformational potential of conscious thought.
Neville amplifies his teaching with a spectrum of narratives: the biblical parallel of Eddie and Moses, the nurse’s deferred Egyptian journey, and the writer’s contractual triumph. Each story underscores a key principle—faith persisted in imagination hardens into fact. These vivid illustrations serve both to inspire confidence and to reveal the universality of the method across cultural, temporal, and personal contexts.
Methodologically, Neville instructs listeners to carry on mental conversations from the premise that a desire is already fulfilled, focusing on auditory or visual elements to deepen conviction. He distinguishes between superficial hearing and profound internalization, urging sustained loyalty to the unseen reality. This process, he argues, transcends the limitations of argument and intellect, engaging the subconscious in creative work.
Beyond practical tips, the lecture probes the metaphysical unity of man and God. Neville asserts that imagination is the very essence of divine operation—Christ in action within our ‘I Am’-ness. By revealing the mind’s capacity to mirror scriptural miracles, he invites a mystical journey toward the ultimate realization of oneness with the divine source.
Finally, Neville cautions against reliance on external means once the imaginal act is complete. He emphasizes non-interference, trusting that the constructive force of our faith will manifest in its proper interval. This teaching not only offers a blueprint for personal transformation but also a radical reorientation of religious belief from dogma to direct, experiential knowledge.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
