In this lecture Neville Goddard unpacks the promise of Job 42:5—hearing of God by ear versus truly seeing Him—and emphasizes that spiritual vision is both individual and direct. He examines the conversion of Paul as a model of personal revelation without any intermediary, asserting that faith arises from inner sight rather than external rituals. Neville shares his own transformative experience when he heard the words “Down with the blue bloods” and “Time to act!”, illustrating the moment of divine sending. He offers vivid examples—meeting biblical Jacob in a childlike vision and recounting his granddaughter’s dream of conversing with the sun and ocean—to show how imagination reveals the living presence of God in all things. Finally, he outlines practical application of the law of assumption and prayer by encouraging believers to assume desired states and grant others’ requests in love, preparing the mind for the ultimate embrace and fusion with the divine.
Tonight’s subject, as you know from the title, is taken from Job: “I had heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job42:5). And that is a promise to every being in the world. There is one divine event to which the whole vast creation moves and that event is to be incorporated into the body of God. God and God alone plays all the parts. And he’s calling each and every one in his own good time and incorporates each, individually, not in any group, into his body. And you wear his body; it is your body, and you and he are one. This is the great plan of the world. If man believes it or not it really doesn’t matter, because eventually he will experience it. So, in the scriptures, to see is to know, the same word in Greek. So when I know it, I know it only because I saw him.
Now we turn to one who is Paul. Paul had the grand event at the moment in time when no one was a greater enemy of the faith than Paul. Then he had a complete transformation of self and then he became the foremost apostle. An apostle is one who is called and sent. To be called is to be sent. Every one will one day be called. At that very moment he will be sent, sent to tell the story, regardless of what others will believe, because over the ages all kinds of things creep into the story and distort it. Now, here is the story of Paul being called. There’s this discrepancy in the Book of Acts, which tells us first in the 9th chapter, then we have it in the 22nd chapter and the 26th chapter. In the 9th chapter, we’re told that his companions who were with him that they heard the voice but they saw no one. Paul saw; they didn’t see. In the 22nd chapter of the same Book of Acts, we’re told that they didn’t hear anything, they only saw the light. Then in the 26th chapter, we’re told a light beyond the brightness of the sun descended upon Paul and his companions; not a word is said of anything being heard.
I tell you tonight, from my own personal experiences, the only one who heard and saw was Paul. It’s unique…this whole thing is so completely individualized, no one but the one who is having the experience actually sees and hears anything. But our fathers through the centuries, they had to embellish it and put an intermediary between Paul and God. When we read his epistles he first states it in the Book of Galatians: If there is one thing that he was completely against was some intermediary between himself and God. He said, “Paul, an apostle—-not by men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ. When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:1,16). There was no intermediary between Paul and God, none whatsoever. And so, he said, speaking now of Jesus the Christ, “Even though I once considered him from the human point of view, I regard him so no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16). He was speaking only of the risen Christ. And said he, in Corinthians, the 9th chapter of 1st Corinthians: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” To him, the only qualification for being an apostle was to have seen the risen Christ, no flesh and blood being. You can walk with one who is that being, but that doesn’t qualify you. It must be a complete unique spiritual experience in you when you see the risen Christ. “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” No man sent me, no organization sent me; I saw him, and to see him is to be sent. So it is Paul’s description of the conversion as we read it first in Galatians; then in the 9th and 15th chapters of 1st Corinthians; and then in the 4th chapter of 2nd Corinthians. Then he speaks of seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ. That’s how you see him. God is Spirit; he can only be seen in his Son; but the Son and the Father are one. So you look into the face and there you see him. At that moment he embraces you and you become one with him, you fuse with him, and fusing with him then he sends you into the world.
And let me tell you my own personal experience of being sent. When you are embraced he sends you. Now these words are not recorded in scripture, but they should be recorded in scripture because the drama is identical for every one of us. Everyone will have the identical experience. There’s only one play, one plot, one plan that God has devised to redeem himself, having fragmented himself—he is the eternal rock—-and he brings us out individualized as himself. And when I was embraced into the body of God, and made one with God, and wore his body as my own body, and then sent, the words ringing in my ear were these,“Down with the blue bloods.” I came back unschooled, uneducated, wondering what is it all about? But the words you could never in eternity forget. I have forgotten so many things between that day back in the twenties and today in the sixties. So much that I have experienced in this world I have completely forgotten. But these words are indelibly impressed upon my mind and I can’t forget them. I didn’t know the meaning of them until one day I came across the meaning of the words “blue bloods”—-“Down with the blue bloods.” It has always meant “church protocol; all external forms of worship,” but all. No intermediary between yourself and God—no external sacrament, no external anything in this world—-just you and God. There’s only God. And so, I heard the words in my head ringing out. I was embraced by God; I am one with the body of God; and while I’m embraced and wearing his body that is infinite love, the words “Down with the blue bloods!” And then the words to me, right into my eye, “Time to act!” “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” “Time to act!” was my command when I was whisked out of that divine society into this world.
So I know that someone tampered with that story as told in the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts was written by the one who wrote the Book of Luke, whoever he was. But between the writing of the original manuscript and our reception of it, there are those who tried to make it conform to their concept of what God ought to have done; and, surely, there must be some intermediary between man who is a villain and the saving of that man. So they called this one Ananias, and they speak of Ananias; and Paul never uses the name Ananias in any of his epistles. He speaks four times of his conversion, the same conversion, and never once mentions that individual, an intermediary between himself and the radical change in his being. But Luke mentions it twice. Here, Ananias comes in sent by God to one who is blinded by the experience to open his eyes that he may see.
So, “My eye sees thee.” Everyone one day will see God, actually see God, and seeing God will become God. We always become what we behold. And God will call us in his own good way, and no one knows his secret of the call. When they’re called, you stand in his presence and you ask no questions. You see infinite love. So when Blake said, “And love is the human form divine,” I know from experience he’s right, it is. It’s the human form divine. You stand in his presence of infinite love. He embraces you as you are asked the question and you answer as you ought to answer it, and you will answer it that love is the greatest thing in the world. As he embraces you, you fuse with him and you are one with God. And there’s nothing but love…nothing but God.
And then will come the most marvelous unfolding pictures of the world, that God’s story, as told in the Old Testament, is true. Nothing thrills you more than when someone comes here who filled to overflowing with the eagerness to understand God’s message will call me on the phone or write me, and then tell me these wonderful visions of theirs. One called this past week and said, “Neville, I met Jacob…but he’s such a little one, he is so small, he’s so tiny, he is so little.” I will tell her, read the 7th chapter of Amos, the 2nd and 5th verses of Amos: “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” Can you conceive of a child that can’t stand? He must be very small if he can’t stand. Today, they’re precocious at the age of nine, pulling themselves up…nine months, I mean. At a year, if he isn’t standing, “What’s wrong with him?” But here, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” And all have been taught to believe that Jacob is a man, who gave birth to twelve sons, and they are the fathers of the whole vast world. Yet, in the Book of Amos, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” So she calls me up and she tells me, “But, Neville, he was so small. I met Jacob. No one told me he was Jacob, I knew he was Jacob. But, Neville, he is so small.” Exactly what the Book of Amos tells you that he really is. The whole vast drama unfolds within the mind of man. There’s nothing but God and his play is contained in man.
Another lady, who is here this night, wrote me the sweetest letter this past week and told the story of her four-year-old granddaughter. The granddaughter was then only four years old. She said to her, “Grandma, I dreamed last night. I dreamed I went away up into the sky, up to the sun, and I talked with the sun. And you know what? He has a face and he has hands and he has feet. And you know what, Grandma? His hands and his feet have magic. And then the big, big ocean began to talk and the ocean talked to the sun. Then the sun came down to the earth. And you know what, Grandma? He had legs, and he could walk, and he walked right over to me, and he kissed me on the cheek, and it was hot. Now isn’t that a silly, silly dream, Grandma?” And how true that is! There is nothing but God in this world. Everything in this world is human, but people don’t know. Everything is human. The sun is God and so is the moon and so is the earth and so is everything in this world. The day will come and you will awaken as God to discover there’s not a thing in this world but God. There is nothing but God simply individualizing himself and expanding beyond the wildest dream from whatever he was prior to the decision to expand. Only God…nothing but God…so an ever-increasing illumination is the presence that is God.
So here was this child’s dream. Luckily the grandmother recorded it and I have it at home in her own written word. Once she goes to school they’ll tell her the sun is this huge hot body that’s gradually burning itself out, because millions of so-called bombs, atomic bombs, are being exploded within it by its own power; and eventually it has no more left and therefore it will grow cold, and we, floating around it, will die because it will cease to be. ___(??) And they don’t know that it has a face and hands and feet, and can come down to the earth and talk with the ocean, and then walk over to a child and kiss the child on its cheek, and the kiss was hot. And so, at her little tiny ___(??), knowing that the sun is away up there and it isn’t a man, so, “Isn’t that a silly dream, Grandma?” I tell you the whole thing is true.
This past week, a lady, who may be here this night, gave me a magazine based on faith. On the front cover and the back cover two lovely thoughts are printed. On the front cover, “Only the Imagination of man is vast enough to contain the immensity of space”; on the back cover, “Man’s Imagination manifests itself in the Imaginations of men.” Now, this is a magazine brought out, I think, quarterly, or maybe half-yearly, but, here, this perfectly marvelous thought that “only the Imagination of man is vast enough to contain the immensity of space.” You think in terms of the sun—they say it takes eight minutes for light to reach us. And the fastest traveling thing in the world, so scientists say, is light—-one hundred eighty-odd thousand miles a second. And you sit right here, whether you know it (never heard these words before), and you think of the sun, and there you are, didn’t take eight minutes at all. Then they tell you that there are things away beyond the wildest dream of man that would take light-years, running into the unnumbered hundreds and thousands, oh, x-number of thousands of light years to reach it. So they tell you where it is, and you think of it, and there you are. So again, “Only the Imagination of man is vast enough to contain the immensity of space”; so 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” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plt.71).
And the day will come you too will have all these experiences. You’ll meet Jacob and he is so small. “Jacob is so small! How can he stand?” And you think in terms of this giant of a man with his twelve sons and all these; no, these are states, all states of awareness. You and I must pass through the state called Jacob. I recall passing through the state where literally Jacob was a deceiver. Jacob deceived his father-in-law. He took cattle and put them at the watering time when it’s time for fertilization, and then put poplar trees before their faces so that when they came to be sired they saw before them these stripes. And so, when they were sired, they brought forth striped offspring. He made a little bet with his father-in-law, Laban, that all the striped would be his and the spotted ones would be his; the plain ones would be Laban’s and only the plain cattle. And so he deceived his father-in-law. He deceived his father, Isaac. He deceived his brother, Esau. He was a deceiving being. But to see God, his name had to be changed, so he wrestled all through the night. Not a night of twelve hours. We are wrestling through the night now. We’ve been wrestling for thousands of years, playing the part of Jacob, until that moment in time when he completes the wrestling and God changes the name to Israel, the pure in heart. For only the pure in heart can see God. And so, we look into the eyes of God and we become what we behold, where we’re transformed from Jacob. And Jacob was always the little one, so small he couldn’t even stand.
I recall when I was a boy six years old, five or six, my mother gave me a candy—-she had a lovely box of candy—-and she said, “Nev, you take this and then give this to Carl”—-my brother Carly. So I took my candy and I took Carly’s, and she said, “Go and give it to Carl.” Well, I ate mine before I left the room and it tasted so good I didn’t have the strength to give Carly his, so I ate his. So you see I deceived my brother, just like Jacob deceived Esau. And I never told Carl that I had a candy to give him. Had I told him he might have cried and told Mother, or he might have forgiven me, he might have. At that age I doubt if you have the strength for forgiveness. And I didn’t tell anyone, so Mother never knew I didn’t give it to Carl. You see, I played the part of the little one called Jacob. “Jacob is so small! How can he stand?”
And she was so surprised when Jacob came into her world, this little child. So small she said to me on the phone: “But, Neville, he’s so small.” The very words she used, “He is so little.” Well, the word in scripture is small. He is so little he can’t stand. Well, he would have to be under a year and not be able to stand. And so, she is passing through these states where she actually is encountering God’s eternal drama. The play is perfect and everyone encounters all these characters in eternity. And so when Job, at the very end—-there are forty-two chapters to Job—-and no one went through more hell than Job, the victim of the most cruel play when he seemingly was not really entitled to it at all; he did nothing to warrant this horror. And in the very end, when he complained and he complained and he complained, he finally, at the very end, he said, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees thee.” I’ve heard of him, but now I see him.
And when you see him, may I tell you, you will never, not in eternity, ever be able to describe him. Daniel tries to describe him in the 7th chapter, but you can’t quite describe Jesus Christ, you can’t. You look into this heavenly face of the Ancient of Days and he’s Jehovah. That’s Jesus Christ, as told you in the 4th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, and I behold “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (verse 6). You don’t see God, God is Spirit, but you see him reflected only in the face of Christ. And you look right into this glorious face, and he asks you “What is the greatest thing in the world?” Automatically you answer, “Love” ___(??) “Faith, hope and love,” the words of Paul. That is a great thrill, because Paul wrote that 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians and you’re quoting Paul, the greatest and the foremost apostle of all. And he claims, “I am an apostle because have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” That is the one qualification for apostleship: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1). And then you quote Paul, and he, Jesus the Christ, embraces you; and you become one with him, and you wear his body and it’s infinite love, there’s nothing but love. And then you are sent and you are told, “Down with the blue bloods!” and “Time to act!” You go out knowing you must sever all contact with all organizations, but all organizations who think that they are going to acquire merit to get into heaven by attending service, by doing this, by doing the other, and all the outside rituals. “Down with the blue bloods!” that was my command.
Then, the one who sent me was infinite power, and Paul describes Jesus Christ as “the power and the wisdom of God.” So I was brought before power, infinite power, and he said to me, “Time to act!” But what a command! Without using lips, without using any vocal chords, but I heard words immediately as he thought them. And that was the power of God. There was magic in the eye. Come back to Pammie, “And Grandma, there was magic in his hands and magic in his feet.” I tell you, there was magic all over. Magic in his eye…he looked into your eye and not a word was uttered as far as a voice here goes; and you hear words in your own mother’s tongue, the tongue in which you were born, that’s what you hear; and hear it is “Time to act!”
You go out, and no organization, join none; make no outer effort to appease God, no outside effort whatsoever; no intermediary between yourself and God. And the day will come, you’ll simply play your part and when God knows the time is right he will call. There will be no resistance. He will call you into his presence and you will look right into the face of Christ Jesus, which reflects the glory of God. There’s no other way of knowing God other than in the face of Christ Jesus. You stand right in his presence, and you see him, and he embraces you, and you fuse with his body; and from then on you are one with Christ Jesus. So the words you understand, then, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.”
So the Sender and the Sent are one, though you’re veiled. And the body veils the being that you are. No one sees the being you are, for you are wearing a body that is a veil. The body is a veil, so no one knows the body you’re really wearing. You know, but others do not know, and you can’t display it to anyone’s mortal eye. But you can display this. But you know “He who sees me sees him who sent me,” for the Sender and the Sent are one. Then comes that moment in time when the veil is taken off for the last time. At that moment, you return to your eternal, immortal form—which was given you by the embrace of Christ Jesus—to become a part of the body of God. And everyone is destined to be a part of the body of God. So, “My eye sees thee.”
But on this level, may I tell you, his every word is true. And while you wait patiently for “seeing,” don’t neglect the other levels of his being. For he tells us that whatever we ask in prayer believing, we will receive. Well, to ask, believing I must surrender myself to that state. There’s a vast difference between speaking of a thing and surrendering myself to that thing. When I surrender to a thing, I think from it, I don’t think of it. I view the world from the state if I surrender to it. So, whatever I ask in prayer, believe that I have received and I will receive. So I surrender, completely abandon myself, to the state. As I do so, I see the world differently. I see it as I would see it were it true that I am the man that I’ve just assumed that I am. And in that assumption I simply view the world and look at the world. So I must not neglect the lower level of God’s truth, for he’s given us these levels to aid us and to cushion us while we rise to that moment when he calls us and embraces us and makes us one with himself.
You take it this night, not only for yourself but for everyone that you know. And treat it lightly. Don’t burst a blood vessel to make it so, treat it lightly. Someone asks anything of you assume that they’ve told you this very moment that they have what they want. Don’t labor on it. Believe in God, God is your own wonderful human Imagination, so don’t sit down and labor. Someone asks you something—-they want a fortune, they want a job, they want more money, they want this, that or the other—-if it’s something that does not injure another if they want it, grant it! Whatever you are asked, if it is in love that you could grant it, grant it. Whenever you use your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you’re actually expressing God, for God is love. So if someone says, “I want more money,” why shouldn’t he have more money? Certainly, more money, no matter what he has. If he has all the money in the world, if he wants more of it, you can grant that. He isn’t going to hurt anyone if he gets it, not if you assume that he has it. Someone wants to be known, alright, if that’s what they want. Who really cares?
I read this morning’s paper…and three that I knew, one quite well; met him back in 1934 in New York City; in fact, it was he who introduced me to my dancing partner who was my dancing partner for thirteen years. And here, no one in this world that I knew of was more afraid of death than he. So he went to sleep and didn’t wake. So at the age of sixty-nine they found the body in the bed. A very able playwright, he wrote many a Broadway hit, one lasted almost two years; many a TV program and many a moving picture he wrote. His name was Eugene Conrad. I knew him as Gene Conrad and Gene introduced me to my dancing partner, Amarina. But he didn’t wake. He was out the night before with his wife and his friends; went to sleep, and Gene is gone. Gene never came here, never came to any of my meetings, because Gene knew the physical Neville. He wanted nothing of the experiences of the one who wears this garment. He knew the physical Neville and he knew the limitations of that physical body, all of its weaknesses, and so he wanted no part of it. This is the eternal story as told in scripture: Oh, we know him, we know his parents, we know his brothers, we know his sisters; and yet when Messiah comes no one will know where he comes from. Well, Gene wanted no part of that, because he wanted to believe in some miraculous being on the outside of himself. Not something on the inside which made him alive, first of all, that would slowly awaken within him and go through the entire story as told in scripture; every little detail would unfold into Gene, and it will.
But tonight, Gene is on the wheel and he’s gone from this wheel into another wheel, the same wheel. And so, he will tomorrow read of one who had the experiences, but memory being very short he will not know he ever knew Neville. But he will know and read of the story of a man who actually had that experience that paralleled that which was told in scripture, and he will listen vividly. One day he’ll be called, and because I’m already part of the body of God when he comes I’ll look right into his face, and he and I will be one, all in the body of God. He doesn’t know it now, but he will know it. Everyone will.
This morning’s paper, Alan Ladd, he went to sleep and he didn’t wake, age fifty, and so here, only fifty years old. He’s made a hundred pictures, and was he interested in this? I don’t think he was interested in this. Another friend of mine who came here twice last year—-I knew him back in the days of Abdullah—-and he came here, Robert Cummings, a very, very healthy person, a nice chap. But Bob doesn’t come because this is not his cup of tea. It’s something a little bit outside of what he would expect. But Bob and I knew each other well in New York City years ago. He is my junior but not by many years I assure you, in spite of his press agent. I’ll be fifty-nine in a matter of days and Bob cannot be less than fifty-eight, in spite of what others will tell you. But at that age you would think that reason would tell you you’re moving towards the inevitable and why not listen to the story as it has been revealed through one. Though you know this garment, listen to that which is actually speaking through the garment.
For what I tell you is true. I’m not making it up, I’m not composing; the whole thing happened to me. Everything said of Jesus Christ as told us in scripture I have experienced. That’s why when I read the inconsistencies I told you this night, I can tell you of these inconsistencies. There’s no intermediary between yourself and God. So when the Book of Acts brings in three, I know that someone tampered with the script, because in the letters of Paul himself, his epistles, he does not mention one intermediary between himself and God. His first letter, which is Galatians, he goes right out and says: The gospel which I preach is not man’s gospel. It was not taught me, nor did I receive it from man, but I got it through a revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal.1:11). And a revelation to Paul was God in an act of self-revealing. He unveils himself, and that’s how you see him. As he unveils himself, you become the thing that unveils itself before you.
And so I know that Ananias is an insertion. There’s no reason for him whatsoever in scripture. So when I read these stories and I go back and I parallel it with what I’ve experienced, I know where, whoever the scholar was or the translator was. Because, after all, in those days they didn’t wear glasses as we do to aid sight, and you could take one little letter and change the meaning of a word. For these scribes were simply working without electric light, without this aid, without glasses, and they were simply scribes transcribing, putting from one part into another what they thought they saw. They could have done it unwittingly. On the other hand, some did it knowingly, trying to make it conform to what they believed God ought to have said, rather than what he did say. But when you’ve had the experience and you know from actual experience, then you see, because to see is to know. And so, when you see it because you’ve experienced it, no one can thwart you. If the whole vast world rose this night in opposition to what I’ve just told you, it would make no difference to me whatsoever. I wouldn’t hate them for it, because I would know each and every one who now opposes it will tomorrow meet me in the body of God, and I’ll be there to greet them. I’ll look right into their face and they’ll become what they behold. The very being that now opposes will become…for I’ll be one as I am now with the body of God. There is nothing but God in this world.
So may I tell you, you dwell upon what you heard this night…yes, that vision of little Pammie. As Blake said in the end of his wonderful vision, The Vision of the Last Judgment, and someone will say to you, “When you see the sun, do you see a big round guinea?” He said, “Oh, no, no, no, I hear a host of heaven crying out and singing ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’” That’s how he saw the sun. Not as a huge luminous body radiating heat and energy, but he saw it as alive with angels crying to the glory of God. And so, little Pammie went a way into the sky and she talked with the sun. “And you know, Grandma, he has a face and he has hands and he has feet. And you know what, Grandma? The big ocean talked to the sun and then the sun, whose hands and feet had magic, came down to earth and talked. And you know what, Grandma? He also had legs and he walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek, and it was hot. Now isn’t that a silly, silly dream?”
And may I tell you, you dwell upon it. Maybe in the not distant future you, too, will go a way up into the sky and talk with the sun. And may I tell you, she’s right, he does have a face, he has hands, and he has feet and he ___(??). So everything in this world is God; there is nothing but God.
Now let us go into the Silence.
In the opening exposition, Neville frames the spiritual journey around Job’s statement “Now my eye sees thee,” distinguishing between intellectual hearing and true inner sight. He argues that genuine knowledge of God comes through personal encounter, a direct unveiling of the divine Self in the heart of each individual. By referencing the Greek equivalence of seeing and knowing, he roots his teaching in scriptural interpretation that transcends mere doctrine.
Turning to Paul’s dramatic conversion, Neville highlights discrepancies in Acts and the epistles to underscore that no human mediator stood between Paul and Christ. He demonstrates, through textual and experiential parallels, that direct revelation alone qualifies one as an apostle, reinforcing the New Thought principle that divine truth is imparted directly through imagination and faith rather than institutionally.
Neville then vividly illuminates the role of imagination as the fabric of reality, citing both the child Pammie’s dream of a sentient sun and ocean and Blake’s poetic vision of the cosmos animated by divine love. These stories exemplify how individuals can perceive God’s presence in familiar phenomena when they transcend material consensus and embrace the world-as-imagined.
In his final segment, Neville gives practical guidance on the law of assumption and prayer, urging listeners to “treat it lightly” by assuming the fulfillment of desires for themselves and others in love. This method not only aligns with the lecture’s theme of immediate divine reception but also prepares the mind for the culminating mystical experience of seeing and becoming one with God, thus fulfilling the promise that “he who sees me sees him who sent me.”
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