In this 16 May 1969 lecture Neville Goddard reframes Scripture as sacred history that must be experienced through the human imagination rather than analyzed as secular record. He asserts that the Bible speaks directly to the imagination—what he calls spiritual sensation—and only indirectly to reason. Goddard reinterprets “Christ” as the Lord’s anointed human imagination and sees David’s anointing as a metaphor for the unified self that emerges after playing every role in life. He emphasizes the I AM principle, teaching that persistent imaginal acts solidify into objective reality because imagination itself is God in action. By urging listeners to adopt his experientially based exegesis and to assume their desired states, Goddard invites a practice of creative visualization that fulfills sacred history within each individual.
The Reverend Dr. Trusler saw the Bible as secular history, and criticised Blake, saying he needed someone to elucidate his ideas. Blake responded by saying: “You ought to know that what is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the ancients considered what was not too Explicit as fittest for Instruction because it rouses the faculties to act.
Why is the Bible more Entertaining and Instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, and only immediately to the Understanding or Reason.”
Tonight I will use scripture, but my premise will not be along any orthodox concept of Christ, for scripture is a mystery. It is God’s secret, which cannot be read with complete understanding, but must be experienced.
When you read in the Book of Revelation, “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born from the dead,” you may think – as the world does – of a unique being who came into the world two thousand years ago. But the word “Christ” means “the Lord’s anointed.” This is not one man called ‘the Lord” and another man called “the anointed,” but one who knows himself to be the Lord’s anointed. Who is the anointed? Your own wonderful human imagination! That’s the only Jesus and the only God. When a friend asked Blake what he thought of Jesus, Blake replied: “He is the Only God, but so am I and so are you.” This statement is true, but man will not accept the fact that his human imagination is God. He cannot grasp the idea that the God who created and sustains the universe is one with his human imagination, but Blake meant his statement to be taken literally. Your own wonderful human imagination is Jesus, the Only God – and so am I.
Matthew made this statement: “Thank you Father that you have hidden these things from the wise and the understanding and revealed them to babes.” God chooses the unlearned (the babes in faith) to confound the wise, for such is His gracious will. Then Matthew adds this thought: “And no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” I ask you to take my yoke (my understanding of scripture gained from personal experience) upon you and learn from me. My yoke is easy and the burden is light, but you must be willing to take that which is in conflict with the teachings of the world, and follow me. We recently saw ninety man-made saints defrocked by the church.
After making hundreds of millions of dollars out of the poor people by selling little medallions and statues of these saints, the church now proclaims they never existed. They were all one grand myth, started by the church for monetary purposes. Millions of these little medallions were sold as intermediaries between man and God, when the human imagination is God, whose name is I AM!
Christ is the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead. The word “Christ” means “the anointed.” Proclaiming to come into the world only to fulfill scripture as recorded in the Old Testament, we must turn to the first book of Samuel to find who the anointed is. In the 16th chapter we read: “Rise and anoint him; this is he.” Then Samuel takes the holy oil and anoints David. And in the 89th Psalm the Lord speaks, saying: “I have found David. With my holy oil I have anointed him. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’ I shall make him the first-born and scripture cannot be broken.” David, the anointed of the Old, is the Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, of the New. The Jesus of scripture is the I am of every child born of woman, who is God Himself. It is God who wears these garments of flesh you and I believe ourselves to be, for our awareness is He. Having made a garment for man out of the dust of the earth, and taking upon himself all of its weakness and limitations, God proclaims: “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me.” The word “men” has been added. The original script reads, “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all unto me.”
Now, God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Acting as your imagination, God will play every part He created in the beginning. And when every part has been played, the sum total of all the parts will appear as eternal youth, personified and called David, the anointed, the Christ-head, the messiah. No one can complete his journey in this world of death until he has played all the parts, because only then can David be resurrected.
In the Book of Psalms, David cries out to the Lord for help, saying: “Thou hast put me in the desolate pit.” Then these words are proclaimed: “Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” The human imagination is the God who redeems David. It is that God who wears your garment of flesh and answers to your name. Imagination’s mighty power is buried in you. He is your son, who will erupt within you when you have played all parts, to reveal you as his Father and the Rock of his salvation. The Bible is sacred history, not secular history, and the events recorded there go on forever and ever.
The being that you really are is God. There never was another and never will be another God, for He is one, not two. You say “I am” and I say “I am,” yet you cannot divide I am. We are the Elohim who fell into division and will resurrect into the unity of the grand I AM. The crucifixion is over, for you have been crucified with Christ. Your death and burial is past. You have entered hell (this world) and you will rise from it after you have played all the parts you promised in the beginning.
You and I as brothers form the one who is called the Lord, the I AM, the Father of David. The word “Jesse” is any form of the verb “to be”, or “I AM.” One day you will find David, the son of Jesse, and know him to be a man after your own heart – who will do, has done, and will continue to do, all of your will. I cannot condemn anyone for what he has done, is doing, or what he may do, for I have found David. My memory has returned, and I know there is not a part, personified in this world, that I have not played. David, he who was promised before the foundation of the world, is made manifest at the end of time. Then you will realise that he is not secular, but sacred.
The Bible records sacred history and the David spoken of there is sacred. When he stands before you and calls you Father, there is no uncertainty as to your relationship. You know your son and he knows his father. The story is not how the Son reveals the Father (which he does) but how the Father reveals the Son. In the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, the question is asked: “A son honours his father. If I am a father, where is my honor?” It takes unnumbered years before the Son is found in the New Testament, which is only the fulfillment of the Old. There could be no New without the Old, for the New is its fulfillment. And the Old, being a sacred promise, finds its fulfillment in the New. The drama of the Old makes sense as it begins to unfold in the New, in you.
I am a man, born in the year 1905. If I could trace scripture as I can my ancestral background, what relationship would I have with Solomon, when I don’t know what Solomon, what David, or what Abraham? I tell you, these are eternal states of the mind, personified, and not physical flesh and blood beings. They are states through which God passes as you and I, because God became us that we may become God.
Our journey of self-imposed limitation began when we said: “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself” yet we have condemned a race of people for taking the life of one, who – like St. Christopher – never lived. The Jesus of scripture is the human imagination in which the Christ of scripture unfolds, and the Christ of the New is the David of the Old. He is the anointed.
When your imagination has finished the work he came to do, the sum total of all the parts he has played becomes personified and stands before you – his Father – to look into your face and see the one he knew before that the world was. And when you see David, you see your reflection, the end result of your imagined journey through death.
This is the great mystery of the seed. Unless it falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit. God died by restricting himself to the limit of contraction and opacity of man in order to go through this world of generation and decay. He is now buried in Zion (your skull), which is the stronghold David takes by going up the spiral water-shaft. One night I felt an explosion in my skull, and when everything settled, I, God, observed my son David, my beloved in whom I am well pleased. I found my anointed and fulfilled scripture. I tell you: you are not predestined to be rich or poor, known or unknown. You are here only to fulfill sacred history.
Right now you can use your powerful imagination to assume you are what at the moment your senses and reason deny. Walk in this assumption, knowing you are all imagination, and all things are possible to you. Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption and watch the world play its part relative to its fulfillment. Your assumption may appear to be false when first imagined; but if you will persist, it will harden into fact, because God is he who is doing the assuming. All of the objective facts you see here on earth are only shadows, which fade because imagination is their reality.
But the real predestination spoken of in scripture is not secular, but sacred. It was proclaimed before that the world was. Then God died in order to assume these garments of flesh, and play all the parts. I know, for I speak from experience. I ask you to take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Believe my experiences, for “If I be lifted up I draw all men unto me.” I have been lifted up out of this world and out of this earthly body. I ascended in a spiral motion to find myself clothed in a body of fire and air. I needed no sun, moon, or stars, at the time, for I knew myself to be the light of the world. As Spirit, I glided above the earth, where I came upon a scene of human imperfection. The blind, the lame, the halt, and the withered, were waiting for me there; and as I glided by, each was made perfect because I was perfect. Then these words came to my mind: “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” That night, in that experience, who played that part? The Father. And who is the Father? I am! And when each was made perfect, the heavenly chorus sang out the last cry on the only cross God ever wore, saying: “It is finished.”
Man has nailed God to a wooden cross by his concept of scripture, but God was never nailed to any wooden cross. He is nailed to your garment of flesh. As that heavenly chorus sang out: “It is finished,” I felt myself once more congeal to this little garment (my cross) in order to tell my story to all who will listen. Some will believe me and some will not, but I will tell it anyway to encourage those who may be persuaded to modify their inherited, fixed ideas. Being born into a certain environment, they inherited their religion and find it difficult to modify it; but I tell you: the Bible is within you and must unfold within you at the journey’s end. Then you will discover that the Father is yourself. This will be revealed to you by your Son, David, who comes to you in the Spirit; and you, too, will say: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.”
Now, the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are titles to books whose authors are unknown, but we do know that the Book of Luke is written by the same man who wrote the Book of Acts. In it we read: “Thou, Lord, who by the mouth of thy servant David has said, ‘Why do the nations rage and the people imagine vain things against the Lord and his anointed?’ “The word translated “servant” here, is translated “son” or “child” every other place in scripture. If it is found before the word, “Jesus,” it is translated “son;” but if found before the word, “David,” it is translated “servant” – which is error.
In the 2nd Psalm, David declares: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord; he has said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,’ and the Word of God cannot be broken.” We are told not to add to or take from His Word, but to fulfill it. Your worldly accomplishments will all vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment and all within it likewise; but your salvation will be forever, and your redemption will have no end. Today, men are making fortunes to leave behind some monument to themselves. Our new president is doing this very thing. He hasn’t made a dent so far, upon the world, but wants to leave his little footprint on the sands of time by building a library in his name – not realising that one day the tide will come in and wipe his footprints away, as though they never existed. Bless him. May he have his desire fulfilled, even though it is such nonsense, when the only purpose for life is to fulfill scripture.
I have come only to fulfill scripture. I have taken the Bible, and beginning with Moses and the law, the prophets, and the psalms, I have explained all the things concerning myself, for it is all about me in the volume of the book. Here I am a simple man, telling all who are born as I was born, that the Bible is written – not about the garment I am wearing, called Neville, but the Being within me. It is that Being who has experienced scripture.
I invite you to take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Don’t take the traditional concepts which have been handed down year after year, for they are false. What Christian, this night, hearing the words “Jesus Christ”, would not think of a unique, single being, who was born in some unusual manner two thousand years ago; yet it isn’t so at all.
Yes, there is an unusual experience within the individual, but it is going to happen in everyone. It is a birth, but not from the womb of a woman called Mary, or any other name, but from the womb of one’s skull. Coming out of your own skull, all of the imagery as described in Matthew and Luke surrounds you. You will then realise that the Bible was written of you. Beginning with your awakening within your skull, you discover you are entombed in it, and you come out of that skull just as a child comes out of the womb of a woman. At that moment God (your human imagination) is born to a higher expansion of yourself, for there is only God, who is forever expanding.
There is a limit to opacity, but no limit to translucency. Taking upon himself the limit of opacity (which is this world), imagination plays every part known to man, breaks its bonds; and God, individualised, has expanded beyond what He was prior to his descent into this hell. No, God is not absolute. If that were true, there would be no joy, no fun – for Imagination could not expand. If you were beyond expansion you could never know anything greater than yourself, and that sameness would be hell beyond measure; but truth is an ever increasing illumination.
You cannot pigeonhole truth, for its expansion goes on forever. Having united all of the experiences of being man within myself, I am greater by reason of the experience. Now I can conceive another play -a far more difficult one, and take upon myself the limitations of it to burst its bonds and resurrect once more; for resurrection is God’s mightiest act.
When I say I am God, I don’t mean this little tiny thing called Neville, but the being who is speaking to you, for he is the one who had the experiences. This thing called Neville is subject to all the pains of mortality. It can drink too much, go to sleep with a big head, and wake tomorrow with an even bigger one. If you are going to judge me by what I do physically, you will never know the being that I am, or the being that you are; for the being who is so identified with you, who answers to your name and feels your pain and joy, is God. God only acts and is in existing beings or men. He is acting in me as my human imagination, as he is acting in you as yours. There never was another God and there never will be another.
Take my yoke (my experiences) upon you and learn from me, for you are here for only one purpose, and that is to fulfill scripture. The part you are now playing is adding to your whole; and when you have played every part you agreed to play in the beginning, your immortal Son, David, will bear witness to your Fatherhood. He is the result of your experiences in this world of death, and will only be found when death has been conquered.Now, on this practical level, you can put your human imagination to the test; for I tell you: all things are possible to him. Test yourself by determining what you want. I am telling you a principle and leave you to your choice and its risk. You may want to hurt someone. I hope you do not, for there is no other, and you are only hurting yourself.
There is only one God who is playing all the parts, so when you pray for another, you are – in truth – praying for yourself. Job prayed for his friends by forgetting himself. In his love for and sincere desire to have them succeed, Job entered into a state of empathy for his friends. In that state his own captivity was lifted, and he became twice as rich, twice as great, as he was prior to the horrors that he experienced.
Name your goal. Imagine you have reached it, and persuade yourself it is true. Believe in the reality of your imaginal act, for it is God in action. An imaginal act is God’s Word, which cannot return unto him void, but must accomplish that for which he sent it. If your imagination is God, then your imaginal act is God in action. Everything in the world was first imagined. The clothes you wear, the chair upon which you are seated, your car, your home, the pictures on the wall – all were first imagined. When I told my tailor what I wanted in the way of a suit, he took a piece of cloth which had no shape and used his imagination, before he even started cutting the cloth. Then he produced what was once only imagined.
Let no one tell you that one man can, in any way, enslave the world, because no one can stop men from imagining. A tyrant like Hitler or Stalin frightened men into accepting their leadership; but the minute men stopped being afraid of them, they were afraid. The minute you are not afraid, you are not enslaved. So, be not afraid. That’s the story of the world. Our economy is based upon fear. The war scare, the peace scare, the market scare. If you can lose all fear, and imagine what you would like to have in spite of what seems to be, and persist in that awareness, your persistence will bring your desire to pass.
If it takes unnumbered tens of thousands to play their part to aid the birth of your imaginal act, they will, not even knowing they are playing the part you assigned them. You don’t need to know who they are. All you are required to do is persist in your imaginal act, because that is God in action; but if you quit, then you do not know who God is. You are told: “The word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me void, but must prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” That word is an imaginal act. It must return to you and bring you the fruit of that which you intended when you sent it out.
Believe me, the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. The Christ of the New is the messiah of the Old. The word “messiah” means “the anointed,” who is David. When David stood before me and I looked into his eyes, my memory returned. It was as though I had suffered from amnesia, for when David stood before me I knew I was his Father.
Now, like Paul, I can say: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race, for I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” What is that crown? My Son, my honor. I cannot enter a more exalted state than that which I left, unless I bring the result of my journey with me. That result is David.
The world may not believe me, but it does not matter, I know that each and every one must experience all the parts, so I forgive all. I cannot condemn a part when I know I am its author. Having written all the parts, I could find no one to play them; so I came down, diversified myself, and played them all. Having resurrected into unity once more, I returned with David – the result of my having played all the parts.
Now let us go into the silence.
In this lecture Neville Goddard presents a radical metaphysical framework where human imagination is not a mere mental faculty but the very essence of the divine, which he terms spiritual sensation. He challenges orthodox readings by insisting that Scripture is meant to be lived and experienced internally, not merely interpreted intellectually. Goddard underscores that the Bible’s narratives are dynamic states of mind that unfold eternally within the individual, making every believer an actor in a universal drama.
Goddard’s reinterpretation of Christ as the anointed imagination fundamentally shifts traditional theology. By equating Jesus, Christ, and the anointed David, he dissolves the historical-figure model and emphasizes the allegorical and psychological layers of biblical events. This reading invites practitioners to recognize their own I AM awareness as the source of creation, thus democratizing the divine role once reserved for a singular historical protagonist.
Central to the teaching is the principle of imaginal acts: the deliberate assumption of desired states until they harden into factual experience. Goddard illustrates this with vivid anecdotes of personal ascent and transformation, demonstrating that persistent belief and inner conviction co-create external circumstances. This emphasis on the creative power of imagination aligns his work with modern conscious manifestation and creative visualization methodologies, yet he roots it firmly in scriptural exegesis.
Practically, the lecture functions as both a metaphysical treatise and a guided meditation manual. Goddard invites listeners to enter “the silence,” often experienced on black-screen recordings, to practice the art of assumption free from sensory distraction. This immersive practice is designed to awaken the divine within through direct experiential knowing rather than through doctrinal study.
Ultimately, Goddard’s message is transformative: we are not passive objects in a predetermined script but active co-creators of our reality. By embracing the I AM principle and persisting in our imaginal assumptions, we fulfill sacred history within ourselves and realize the unity of the Creator and the created. This lecture stands as a powerful call to self-realization and divine empowerment through the art of spiritual sensation.
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