In this lecture Neville Goddard explains that the art of living is to embody the feeling of the wish fulfilled, demonstrating how the external world is a microcosm of the soul within. He interprets the biblical story of releasing Barabbas and crucifying Jesus as a parable for letting go of limiting beliefs and self-doubt (Barabbas) and affirming the Christ-mind of imagination within. Goddard illustrates his point with a case history of a divorced woman who, through nightly visualization and role-play, manifested a loving marriage and financial provision for her son. He emphasizes that the Passover and resurrection are not past events but continuous processes of passing into higher states of consciousness. Finally, he argues that true spiritual power lies in living from the end, forgiving through imagination, and continually transcending one’s former self.
As you know, we feel that life should be a perpetual increase of the things you love! That, to me is the art of living. In man’s ability to live in the end, to live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, lies man’s capacity to live the more abundant life. I do not care what your objective is; feeling that you have it is living a more, abundant life.
First, tonight, let us turn to three who were awake, and by three I mean three men. The whole purpose of life is to awaken and join the chorus of awakened humanity, which is God. We will turn to a great poet, one who passed from this sphere only within the last two or three years, Walter de La Mare.“So flows experience, the vast without.It is the microcosm of the soul within,The day-distracted eye may doubt,But no longer as the dreams begin.”
Think of it! This vast “without” is the microcosm of the soul within. The day-distracted eye cannot believe it, but you take this and expand it to the nth degree and see that the “vast without” is only the microcosm of the soul within. How can man believe it?
Now we will turn to the great bard – Shakespeare: Everything in the world is the projection of something that activated within myself. I meet a friend and I say that I love him and I see in him something that I would like to change. Everything in this world is the microcosm of this vastness in my own being. Everything in the world, “no matter what it is, all the so-called evil could be changed, would man, observing, distill it out.” If I knew this I could look at anything, any condition, as a scientist could look at bubbling mash, and know I could extract something from it that is good. Blake tells us: “He who does not imagine in stronger and broader lineaments, and in stronger and brighter light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.” This is in a way a parable. A parable is a story told to illustrate a truth.
In Second Corinthians 3:6, in the letter which Paul writes to the Corinthians – these are not the people of Corinth. You are Corinthians, for these are stories of the mysteries, and so this is Corinth, so the letters are addressed to those who are interested in rising to another level of consciousness: “We are the ministers of a new covenant, not written in the code but in the spirit.” Now remember the teaching: “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” So we are ministers of a new covenant. You be the judge, for I am not here to judge you. But if I came and whispered in your ear that you were harbouring a robber, would you react violently? You be the judge, but I will tell you a story, in the code written in the form of a letter. This is the story of Jesus and Barabbas.
Now it was the season of the year when it was customary to release a man who was imprisoned. “Whom will you have me release unto you? Barabbas or Jesus? And they cried, Release Barabbas! Crucify Jesus!” “And when the wife of Pilate said to him, will you do this thing? he washed his hands,” etc.
Now you take that, and that is the code – but what does it really mean? That it took place, actually? We are warned of those who “depart from the truth,” and those who think that the resurrection has already taken place, they have wandered from the truth, for if it has already taken place then I cannot know the power that resurrects every dream in the world. The resurrection must be taking every moment in time in all men. The Passover does not take place at a certain time of year, like Easter. The Passover takes place every moment of the day, if we are willing to pass over into another state. There must always be a passing over from one state to a higher state. So, which will you have me release, the robber or Jesus? Which will you let go of, and to which will you hold fast? I must release the robber, for I am housing him. Who is he? If this moment you want something and reason tells you that you cannot have it, than you are entertaining the thief that robs you of being what you want to be in this world. This is the “son of Satan,” something in me that robs me of that other Son who will save me. The thing that will save me from what I am, is Christ Jesus. And what is keeping you from what you want? That is Barabbas.
So, they crucify Jesus; they fix the state desired. The whole drama takes place in you. You must release Barabbas and crucify the Lord. You must learn the art of doing it. I can tell it best now by telling a case history I have just received. This is what she told me: She had a neighbor, a woman who had been divorced for nineteen years, and who was up to her ears in debt. She worked hard but she could not get beyond a day-to-day existence. She could not afford a vacation, though she had one due. And in four weeks college was starting and her son wanted to go to college, and there was no means with which to send him. She had prayed over her problem, but she had got nowhere, and then she asked this lady who wrote the letter to pray for her. This lady explained to her this teaching that I am giving you here, and then she did what follows for her neighbour. She asked her first: what do you really want? Well, this woman had been divorced for nineteen years and she had lost her faith in men, but still she said that above all else she would like to be happily married and out of debt.
Every night for a month this lady from the class here went to her neighbour’s house and talked with her and made her think of the qualities she most wanted in a husband: gentleness, kindness, tolerance, attentiveness, honesty, etc. All the qualities she felt a man should have she had to name over and over. And then the lady asked her: “Can you feel the embrace of such a man?” and the other lady said: “Yes, I think I can.” And then she did something else. She went through the marriage ceremony with her neighbour, the part of putting on the ring and hearing the words pronouncing the couple man and wife. And then she left her neighbour with the suggestion that she sleep in that state and promised her that she would do the same thing – that is, sleep in the state herself of having just seen her neighbuor married.
They did this for four weeks. And then a man came into her office (the office of the neighbor) and in talking, he asked her where she was going for her vacation. She was ashamed to confess that she was not going anywhere, so she said she thought maybe she might go up to the High Sierras, and the man said: “Then you must be my guest, for I own a hotel up there.” He booked rooms for three of them: the woman and her son, and the lady who had helped her. The man was very kind and helpful to them. He told the woman that he had lost his wife a few months before. But he also told her that he would never marry again. The woman had grown fond of him and was distressed by this and told the lady who had helped her. “What will I do now? He is never going to remarry. He said so.” The lady said, “You are happily married, so we are not going to discuss this. You slept every night in the feeling of having a wonderful husband, a man who has the qualities you desire. So how can we discuss the matter? You are married.”
That was over two years ago. She has been married to this man for two years. Yes, he changed his mind about marrying again. He is sending this woman’s son through college. She said recently to the lady who had helped her with this teaching: “You have no idea how kind and good he is, how wonderful.” The woman said: “Haven’t I?” She said: “I set up these qualities with you and helped you. Do you think I don’t know what he is like?”
Now back to the crucifixion. You must release the consciousness Barabbas, the robber. This woman robbed herself for nineteen years. She robbed herself of the lovely things of life. Finally she faced a choice: either Barabbas released or Jesus released, or Jesus crucified. If I want to be anything in this world and say I cannot be that, then I am robbing myself of the ability to be it. Man can be anything in this world that he wants to be, for man awake is the son of God. There is only one son and that is Christ Jesus and that son is human imagination, the only Christ Jesus in the world. There will never be another. So I look out on the world and I think it towers over me and I do not know that actually it is the microcosm of the soul within me. If I do not know it, start the dream to prove it. Can you feel embracing arms around you? This woman began the dream and then realised it. The whole vast world without only mirrors the soul within. The Passover means the passing over into another. When we were children we were told that Jesus sacrificed himself for us 2,000 years ago. That is belief in a lie. You depart from the truth if you believe [the] crucifixion is already past. It is not over; it is constant fact every moment of time. It is not past and it must be continually taking place. The whole vast drama unfolds within us. We can distill out of any situation the good that is in it. You can take it as you take a mash and distill the essence from it.
You are told the Old Testament is one covenant and the New Testament is another covenant. Do not believe it. There is only one Book. When you find the spirit of it that sets you free, that is the new covenant. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. Take the same “code” and re-read it, and strike as it were the rock and then draw forth the water and make it into wine. Rock, as we are told you, means literal fact. Water means psychological understanding; wine means the application of that truth. If you know this, every dream in the world can be realized. In the capacity to live in the wish fulfilled lies your capacity for living the more abundant life. These stories which I tell you are “stone” if you take them literally, but “water” if you understand them, and then they become “wine” if you apply what you have learned. You can get all the results as this lady got them.
But the lady who is now married, though she is happy she may slip into a way of life and forget how this was brought about. People quickly “recover” from this teaching. I could tell you many stories of friends of mine who wanted help and who told me the dream they wanted to come true. And with them I listened as though I heard and looked as if I saw what they wanted to see, and the thing became true in their world. There is the story of my brother-in-law, told in one of my books. He knows that story is there, and though all my other books are in evidence in his library, that particular one he has put up so high that no one can reach it. He is such a factual, realistic person that though the dream he wanted most in the world was brought about, now he is embarrassed when he thinks about the way it was brought about. He is too down-to-earth to want to remember it.
So I tell you we must remember the story of the crucifixion. As Paul said: “I die daily.” I should be dissatisfied: I should have always a “divine dissatisfaction” and transcend and transcend, to become one of the awakened brothers. I cannot live on what I learned today. Extend the borders of your tent. Not only must I grow, but also I must also outgrow or I am not growing. Let no one tell you that this world is your end. You are a fabulous being. You do not change worlds by spatial travel; you change by a change in consciousness. Subjective or objective is determined by the level on which my consciousness is focused.
I ask you to construct a little drama that implies you have realised your dream. This lady went through the ceremony of marriage and with a man who had all the qualities she wanted. And in five weeks the drama began to unfold. The whole thing took three months and now this lady is happily married. Everything you want is within, for the vast without is only the microcosm of the soul within. But though you doubt, you will no longer doubt when the dream begins. “He who does not imagine in stronger and brighter lineaments than this perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.”
Smell a rose. See it. You can see and smell it the degree your attention is centered on it. If you let it posses your mind you will see it and smell it. That is being creative. You see what you want to see, and enter into and live it as if it were true. Others may call it fantasy and when it becomes real they will believe you did it this way. But let anyone else believe what they want to believe. I told a friend of mine who was critical without taking the trouble to know what he was being critical of: your taste and your opinion do not qualify you to criticise. You must first know what I am trying to do, and then you may venture your opinion. But if you do not know what I am doing or what I am trying to do, then how can presume to criticise?
Everything in this world is done through imagination, but many people do not see it. But do you know of anything that was made that not first imagined? But you make your dream and walk in it as if it is true, and others will come along like workmen following you to execute it.
Edison told Tesla that it would not be possible to have alternating current. Edison said it could not be, but Tesla told him: “I can see it. I can see the machine. And I am starting it and stopping it, and I am taking out the kinks in it before I make it in the laboratory.” Read that story in the book called Prodigal Genius, the story of Tesla [ed. The Life of Nikola Tesla]. They called him mad before he died. You know why? He said he was communicating with Edison, who was dead. Because others could not understand this, they called Tesla mad.
Ecclesiastes 3: “I am the beginning and the end” and “there is nothing to come that has not been and is.” Creation is finished. We are only becoming aware of increasing portions of that which is. If everything is, am I still creative? I am in this sense: I become a selector of that aspect of reality to which I want to respond and then I bring that into my world. It is like taking the alphabet. Shakespeare and Blake used only twenty-six letters. A moron would use exactly twenty-six letters. But think of the difference. Think of an infinite alphabet and we select what we will from that alphabet. But you just put yourself in relation to it and then it becomes real in your world.
The two factors which are most important in my world, I would say, are my personality and then my relation to reality. Any real change in my personality should make a change in my outer world. I can interfere with the purely mechanical action of my brain by accepting what my brain does not register. If I can imagine, then produce in myself a shift of personality and then it works, the One condition is imposed on man: that he believe that he already has that which he wishes. And one that confirms this: “When you stand praying, if you have aught against your brother, forgive him,” etc. You think this means to have something against someone? No. Forgiveness in the mystical sense tests man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. I think I cannot do something. That belief is what I must forgive. If I can do this, then I am forgiving myself. If I can take a friend who is ill and accept the fact that he is ill, then I have that against him. I must forgive him by seeing him looking well, and to the degree that I am self-persuaded, I am forgiving what I held against him.
Can you forgive a man by mumbling some words and saying you have forgiven him? You can only forgive to the degree that “complete” change of consciousness takes place. When I think of you, I should see a different you, a new you. If I do not see a different you then I have not forgiven you. This lady I told you of tonight “forgave” her friend, for she saw her happily married. And that marriage was consummated.
I tell you that no matter what your dream is it can be realised, you will enact the crucifixion. If you think the “resurrection is past already, you have departed from the truth” (Second Timothy 2:18) It must be going on eternally. It is up to you what you do now. Everyone can do it. That is the purpose of this platform – so that you may not only realise your dreams here, but that you awaken and slip into other worlds. There are worlds within this world, and worlds within worlds. I know – I have seen them and I have been in them. It does not matter what people say to me about whether I can do it or not. I know I can do it, and I do it. I know that I live in a home in West L.A. and come here on Monday and Thursday nights. You might as well tell me that I do not come here, as to say that I cannot enter some other sphere. I cannot take you with me, for the world only calls “reality” what can be shared. But it was not a subjective illusion; it was real.
There are many things that cannot be shared at the time, for the background of the other is not such that they are ready to receive it. But that does not make it less real. In time all will come to it.Now let us go into the silence.
1. Neville Goddard begins by establishing his central thesis: life’s abundance is accessed by living "in the end," which means feeling and inhabiting the reality of one’s desire as already fulfilled. By framing the external world as a direct reflection of one’s inner state, he invites listeners to adopt the role of conscious creators rather than passive observers. The reference to Walter de La Mare and Shakespeare serves to underscore the idea that imagination and perception shape one’s experience of reality.
2. The core parable revolves around the choice between Barabbas and Jesus. Goddard decodes this biblical episode not as a literal historical event, but as a symbolic transaction: Barabbas represents the self-limiting beliefs and fears that rob us of fulfillment, whereas Jesus symbolizes the Christ-mind of creative imagination. By choosing to "release Barabbas" (discard self-doubt) and "crucify Jesus" (experientially affirm the desired state), one enacts an inner crucifixion and resurrection that continuously renews consciousness.
3. The case history of the divorced woman provides a practical application of the teaching. Through repetitive visualization exercises—naming desired qualities, enacting a marriage ceremony, and sleeping in the felt sense—she transforms her circumstances. Goddard uses this story to demonstrate the universality of his method: any desire, when felt as real and sustained in imagination, will externalize itself in time.
4. The lecture further examines the unity of the Old and New Testaments, arguing that the letter killeth and the spirit giveth life. Literal readings of scripture are likened to stone, intellectual understanding to water, and applied imagination to wine. Here Goddard situates his law of assumption within a mystical-psychological framework, asserting that continuous "resurrection" of one’s desires is an eternal process rather than a historical event.
5. In conclusion, Neville Goddard underscores the necessity of "divine dissatisfaction"—an ongoing impetus to transcend current limitations and extend the borders of consciousness. He reminds his audience that imagination precedes creation, and that the power to influence reality lies in the sustained, vivid experience of the end state. By forgiving oneself and others through altered perception, one aligns with the new covenant written in spirit rather than code.
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